These salt ponds are going to be transformed in the next few years. The question is how. (Photo by Matt Baume.) In a collection of salt evaporation ponds tucked between a freeway, a sleepy little marina, and the headquarters of Dreamworks Animation, the San Francisco Bay's ecological future hangs in the balance. The ponds themselves look deceptively blank: Vast flat rectangles of shallow water once used by Cargill to produce salt, the two-and-a-quarter square miles are fenced-off and nearly featureless, like an enormous bank of flattened solar panels. To the west is Bair Island, itself a former salt pond. After …

Hayes Valley Farm is flourishing where a freeway ramp used to be.Photo: Zoey KrollJust a few years ago, they were abandoned freeways, dilapidated back yards, and institutional dumping grounds. But today, thanks to San Francisco's urban agriculture renaissance, many of these pockets of underutilized land are being transformed. And one local company -- Bayview Greenwaste -- is playing a key role, by transforming waste into mulch, and giving it away. The city's largest agricultural experiment to date may be the Hayes Valley Farm, which is growing on the former site of a freeway ramp. The ramp was demolished, but the …

If you want to keep garbage out of landfills, you have to stop thinking about it as garbage. Instead, think of it as resources. If you’re throwing away the part of that veggie burger you couldn’t finish, you’re throwing away potential compost for the vineyard that’s growing grapes for the bottle of wine you’ll drink with your next meal. This is how Jack Macy thinks. He developed San Francisco’s trailblazing composting program and is currently Zero Waste Coordinator for the city. Here, he shares the city’s secrets to success. Q. What makes San Francisco's waste management unique? A. We have …

Bales of plastic are collected at Recology’s Pier 96 facility.Photo: Walter ParenteauGarbage: it's gross, it stinks, and all anyone wants is to be rid of it. For most cities, that means sending thousands of tons of unwanted flotsam and jetsam to landfills every day. But in San Francisco, garbage is treated like a resource that shouldn't be wasted. And that means formulating a plan to reduce the city's garbage output to zero. Yes, that's right: zero. Sound impossible? Well, thanks to the country's toughest mandatory recycling and composting laws, the amount of refuse that San Francisco diverts to recycling and …

California's new gold rush has prospectors back in the water, but they're not panning for metals. This time, it's all about recycling the painkillers, steroids, and mood stabilizers in South San Francisco Bay. Alviso's Medicinal All-Salt may look like ordinary table salt, but it has a little extra pharmaceutical kick. Exactly which drugs are present is somewhat unknowable, even to those selling the product, since it depends on which ones happen to have been recently flushed down local toilets. That mysterious grab-bag aspect is all part of the fun -- unless of course, you happen to get a batch infused …