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Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities?
Hugh Pickens writes "After San Francisco enacted the nation's strictest regulations on composting in 2009, the city has increased the amount of food scraps and plant cuttings it composts to more than 600 tons per day, more than any other city in North America, and recently celebrated the collection one million tons of organic materials. Other cities have been watching as Seattle passed a similar mandate in 2010 diverting about 90,000 tons of organic waste from landfills in the first year and New York City is trying to figure out how to implement this type of program for its 8 million residents. The impact is potentially huge in terms of reducing the load on landfills as a study by San Francisco's Department of Environment shows that more than one third of all waste entering landfills could be composted instead. 'We want to see composting be a standard for everybody,' says Michael Virga, executive director of the U.S. Composting Council. 'Urban, suburban, it doesn't really matter where you are.' Although composting initially costs more than land-filling, over the long-term, the benefits will outweigh the costs. 'We can reduce a large source of landfill-generated greenhouse gases, extend the life of our landfill, and generate a valuable resource for the community in the form of premium soil and mulch,' writes Shanon Boase. 'What's more, this industry generates additional jobs.'"
For all non-negative values of X the answer is:
No
What I do with my own garbage is my own business. If I pay someone to haul all of it away to a properly managed landfill, that is my right.
I am internalizing my costs. The green nuts can go pound sand.
So recycling is mandatory, but people in the US go without healthcare? No offense intended guys and gals in the US, but the priorities of your lawmakers seem a little skewed.
Silly question... if it is headed to a landfill, isn't it being 'composted' anyway? We are burying it, after all.
who is going to want to work those jobs????
OWS seems to be doing a great job of that.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Suck on that, mandate.
Aside the fact much of this Green Waste will decompose over time, releasing hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, which could be harvested in a properly designed and maintained natural gas generating landfill, much of farm land is being depleted of minerals in topsoil, where this compost should be placed back.
Mandatory? No, people should be doing this because it makes good business sense.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If it's a City service, then the costs are shared among the taxpayers, so the associated responsibilities are also shared. If you pay for your trash service independently, then you have a point.
In my town, you pay a base fee to cover the trucks coming around, and you also have to buy special town-issued trash bags (which are expensive), which covers the cost of processing the trash. Recycling is free. If you want to throw away your recyclables, then at least in my town, you do pay for it yourself. With the old tax-supported system, when you didn't recycle, I paid for it.
"What's more, this industry generates additional jobs.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The recycle rules in Nova Scotia are pretty strict, trash must be separated and almost all organic waste must be composted (the exception is animal fats because they attract animals). I travel up there frequently enough that it was initially a major pain in the ass but I've found myself more aware of the trash I generate. I try to buy things that have less packaging and also try to buy commonly used household items more in bulk.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Not trying to troll, I'm legitimately unfamiliar. Doesn't organic waste biodegrade in a landfill anyway? The article mentions reducing the carbon released by landfills- aren't we just shifting that carbon to a different facility?
The high-quality soil produced does seem like a sweet plus, but the "jobs created" claim seems silly (wouldn't it destroy an equal number of landfill jobs?)
I have been backyard composting for a while now. I put vegetable scraps in a small stainless steel bucket under my sink. When the bucket is full, I take it out (every four days or so) and dump it in the compost bin. My area also has curb side food scraps collection, which would be easy enough to use, but I prefer to compost myself, so that I can feed my garden each spring. Besides getting a nice garden, one of the main benefits has been that my garbage is much cleaner. In fact, besides a few bones, most of my garbage consists of unrecycleable plastic bags and containers. When I take my garbage out, it is a plastic bag full of plastic bags.
The main work consists of turning the compost outside every once in a while (which wouldn't be necessary for curb side collection), and in cleaning the compost bucket under the sink, which is easy since it is stainless steel. The garbage bin is less stinky, which is nice, and I don't get the drippy bags of garbage that I used to get when I put food scraps in the regular garbage. In other words, I have found composting to be relatively easy, and I suspect most people would have a similar experience once they got started.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Understanding that one way allows the reuse of the organic materials, doesn't the organic material break down in much the same way whether it is in a landfill or a compost pile? Doesn't this generate the same amount of greenhouse gases? In addition, isn't driving two different trucks to make two different pick-ups and then dumping in two different locations actually less energy efficient and more polluting?
But if it makes financial sense to do it, they should offer service to pick it up for a cheaper rate than the service to take it to a landfill.
Why not pass a law making it illegal to be lazy in this country. That would cover a whole range of sins and skip the incrementalism.
For the early replies I am reading, saying it's my trash, I'll do what I want - are you serious?
Everyone has a responsibility toward the social compact.
What really burns me is why environmentalism, basic stewardship and common sense have been co-opted by the left, when if anything, *conserv*atives should be the ones owning this issue. Stewardship over the land - it's in the friggin' Bible.
At the end of the day, isn't preserving the planetary resources in everyone's best interest?
This is the main reason why I am a GDI.
How will dumping the organic stuff into a compost pile generate less greenhouse gases than if dumped into a landfill? I would assume that the organics would still decompose in the same way. Is the decomposition different in composting vs. landfills?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The very summary of this article is just assuming that the US has already thrown out the constitution and completed the transition to a communist dictatorship.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Tenth amendment to the US constitution.
The question is not "Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities?", it's "Can Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities?" The answer, according to our founding documents, is a resounding NO.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
If you want X to be provided as a tax-supported service, as rubbish removal is for residents in much of the USA, then it is completely appropriate for the government to regulate the use of X.
This can be done in a variety of ways, ranging from strict requirements to creating financial incentives (such as where you have to pay for each bag of trash, but not for recycling or composting, which is how it works in my town).
I can see how certain cities can see a value in regulating their citizens to recycle/compost certain items. I just can't see how this will work in certain area's especially like NYC where people have such small living areas already. Will they be required to keep a compost heap within their apartments, or just haul it to the roof for a communal heap?
I just dont think it would be feasible for people who don't own any outdoor property to fulfill this type of directive. When I lived in Queens, I did own outdoor property, but it consisted of approximately 4 square feet in front of my apartment that already was taken up by a bush. Perhaps composting is much more complicated than I've been led to believe, but then this just becomes a money saving venture for the city (which won't lead to a tax break) and more work for it's citizens.
I grew up composting. My father is a horticulturist, and he was eager to create free fertilizer from things we would normally discard. But he never got around to using the compost, so for ten years we had a big smelly pile of mucky garbage in our backyard for neighbor kids to accidentally slip and fall down in. The volume doesn't go down as much as you'd think. Still, it was cool to watch steam rise off the compost pile as the bacteria did their work. Here in parts of urban Portland Oregon, you have to compost even if you can't grow anything on your property, and it's become ridiculous.
The amount of time it takes is dramatically different. Biodegradeable substances don't degrade quickly at all in landfills. Managed composting, on the other hand, can turn vegetable matter into soil in a couple months. (Casual home composting is rather slower, but still lightning-fast compared to landfills.)
Absolutely, make it mandatory. Then when millions of compost heaps go neglected (because, by the way, composting correctly is a process and a lot of work), we'll be buried under rat-infested garbage heaps, spreading disease, stink and illness throughout the nation.
But, really, go ahead and make it mandatory. It'll give the toxic cleanup industry just the shot in the arm it needs.
Neglected compost becomes soil eventually. If proper compost bins are used, rats are not an issue. This article is referring to curb side food scraps collection, where the city collects the scraps and brings them to a large facility. I can promise you that such facilities will turn those scraps into compost quite quickly. They won't be "toxic".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Composting properly is painfully simple. Composting quickly is trickier, though it's pretty easy if a city service does it.
I've never really understood the practice of bagging up your lawn clippings, or raking up your leaves and throwing them in bags as if it was all waste products to be disposed of. Mulching everything with a mulching lawnmower is less effort, better for your yard, and better for the city since it saves money in collection costs.
Leaves in particular once ground up are wonderful soil amendments for a garden. They're not particularly high in nutrients, but when the leaves break down, they turn into hummus, which both retains moisture, and improves drainage.
AccountKiller
http://sludgefacts.org
http://sewagesludgeactionnetwork.com
Greenwashing doesnt make it any safer....or better. And yes, it is fitting that /. put this under politics.
It is the politicization of bad science.
http://www.sludgevictims.com/Lawsuits/PA_sludgelawsuit-Anglos.html
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x435839884/L-A-others-sue-Kern-County-over-sludge-again
http://www.lacitysan.org/biosolidsems/managing_biosolids/land_application.htm
http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/bcenv26&div=27&id=&page=
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/water.nsf/NPDES+Permits/Sewage+S825/$FILE/503-032007.pdf
The more you know about USA the better Denmark looks.
"And as for healthcare, no one goes without treatment, even if they don't pay for it themselves, like myself and most of us do."
Dead wrong. Nobody goes without urgent care if they show up to an ER. Anything short of that... unless you're (a) very poor, (b) over 65, (c) a veteran, (d) under 18 and poor but not very poor, or (e) have a job which provides health insurance, or (f) married to or the (25 year old) child of someone in category e.
That sounds like everybody, but its far from it. This is just for "body" care -- dentistry and health care coverage gaps in America are massive, often even for the so-called insured. Even if you are in one of those categories, you're not guaranteed care... it all depends on what ails you, who declares it a pre-existing condition, whether or not the best treatment is the lowest cost treatment, whether or not you want a second opinion or a specialist, if you can afford the co-pays for therapeutic treatment or medication which pile up week after week, etc. etc.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
But what if you reframe the question as "Should X be a condition for Y service?" then it gets harder to answer, and also much more interesting to think about.
"Should composting be mandatory?" Absolutely not.
"Should composting be a required condition for using municipal garbage service?" Maybe. And that's what the real discussion should be about.
A lot of seemingly left-vs-right authoritarian-vs-libertarian flamewars could probably be avoided by looking at things in a quid-pro-quo "not just abstract social contract but a tangible you-see-it-in-action every day contract" perspective.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While it doesn't actually bother me, being the cynic that I am, I do feel that most of these indicatives are designed with the simple goal of generating revenue for the few. If money can be made from composting and recycling, then the suppliers of the raw materials should be paid. I’m sure some this happens in some countries or cities, but it doesn’t where I come from.
Organics in landfills produce methane, which is more potent than carbon dioxide. Also, there's no chance to reclaim the nutrients, as pretty much everything in a landfill ends up toxic.
As for the jobs claim, it might be silly, or not. The soil is sold, so there might be some relative value to those jobs compared to landfill jobs. And there are other positive externalities, such as reduced need for landfill space (which is a different ongoing cost than labor).
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/organics/food/fd-basic.htm
I live in a small apartment. So far I did not find any solutions for composting in an apartment setting.
We have a large scale composting facility here in VT. The scraps from area restaurants are composted and "dirt" is created, we also compost waste from the sewage systems (separately) which becomes fertilizer. The second is huge because it diverts waste from the lake.
About two years ago the large scale compost facility got so large that it became an environmental polluter - caught by the environmental police, fined, and ultimately closed. The facility moved to a better location complete with more modern tools - including a lined landfill in order to protect drinking water. Previously the wonderful rich juices were making their way into a major river and helping dangerous things grow in the lake - not to mention that large amounts of organic juice aren't good for you.
The free compost is nice - each year you can fill your trunk with dirt and make your garden nice. It is used in landscaping - for just the price of truck fuel. There is no doubt that it is better to reuse it immediately rather than have it sit "forever" in a landfill.
Recycling is a requirement of the future. But as it grows, just like those recycled PCs going to China, it isn't the perfect be-all solution. It still requires the same monitoring.
And landfills? Try Incineration which can also produce electricity and the waste heat can be used for district heating. From an european viewpoint this "waste mangement" looks like 19th century.
No.
And it shouldn't be mandatory anywhere, not just in US cities.
The real problem is that the garbage collection services are monopolized by government, the franchise licenses or however it's done, depending on locality, basically there is no competition in garbage collection.
It's like any large utility - it's taken over by special interests that use government power to prevent any competition.
What really should be happening is that this should be open to real competition, government shouldn't be providing any of these utility services and real competition would price garbage collection according to their processing capabilities.
So you may have a MONETARY INCENTIVE to separate your garbage at home, if some of the provided services were cheaper based on the clients separating the garbage before it's picked up.
That's the real way to do it. Maybe then there would be an incentive to innovate in this space and some of the garbage processors would find ways to separate the garbage in their collection facilities, but this would cost the end clients more.
It's all about choices and convenience. Maybe the ONLY thing that LOCAL government should be involved in is bylaws that say you can't DUMP garbage on the streets or whatever, but I am against this as well, it should be a strict property rights issue. But if a locality comes together to set up some bylaws, it's their right, though you KNOW it will be abused and special interests will get some special privileges based even on this level of government involvement.
But hey, that's again a rational approach to the problem, and it doesn't work well with people here, who don't like the rational approaches.
You can't handle the truth.
Your rights end when you start crapping in my yard.
So, yes.
Industry dumping deadly chemicals, your Hummer, the crap that leads to the algee blooms in the ocean, all of it has a direct impact on me. And thus, yes, I and the rest of the world get to tell you to stop shitting in the nest.
Check your premises.
The planet is not going to shrivel up and die if people don't compost. We're just talking about reducing the amount of land dedicated to landfills, or the cost of building more incinerators, both of which are substantially about money.
Besides, think about how many jobs would be created if municipalities hired people to sort recycleables and compostables out of household trash. Not composting is a public service. (Yes, that is a joke, although some people may not recognize it.)
I started composting a few years ago at home, and was blown away at how fast it actually happens. If your starting a "fresh batch", it can take about a month before it starts to really look look like soil, but after that, anything you add is unidentifiable within a few days to 2 weeks depending on what it is.
I'm sure times vary, but still, I was expecting it to take months for an old apple to break down. By the end of the year, my 3 member family has a 55 gallon trash can filled with usable compost.
1) Using the reason of "cutting down on landfilling" for composting is a straw dog. There is no scarcity of land for landfills. That is a myth. 2) Eventually, the city where separating out the table scraps for composting becomes mandatory, will hire "trash police" whose sole duty is to check and fine people who do not comply with the rules. 3) Rules for what can be composted can be quite complicated and it is easy to violate the rules unknowingly. I lived in Germany there the rules (read:laws) varied from city to city. We had a battle with the landlord since he was fined for a violation he did not commit (one of the tennants violated the laws). She accused us, the "Americans", when it was someone else. 4) Special compostible plastic bags are usually required for recycling compostible material. These bags have limited strength and can burst if overloaded. They have a limited shelf life and if exposed to the sun can fall apart in your hands. And they are not cheap. 5) If it is economical and profitable, then let the private sector handle it. Otherwise, it's a waste of time and money.
The Industry is not about saving the planet or doing the right thing, it this all makes too much sense for politicians to understand.
At least I found it obvious that "America" contrasted with "Canada" refers to the United States of America.
City government regulations already direct spending of your tax dollars on trash collection. The government could just refuse to pay for picking up waste that is compostable unless it is separated.
Cities and states could also promote policies that encourage people to mulch and compost. For instance, many homeowners mow the lawn, throw the clippings away, and then buy fertilizer to restore the nutrients lost when the clipping are thrown away. If cities and states taxed fertilizer highly, and did not tax mulching mowers, then perhaps we would have less money wasted on putting clipping in the landfill. Have no doubt. Those fiscally liberal people who throw away lawn clipping and then waste money on fertilizer are forcing all of us to pay much higher taxes.
The city or county could also rent wood chippers at cost, or have a central facility that make the service available for free and sell the wood chips to the community at a nominal charge.
here is the situation in my city. We have recycling places scatter conveniently around the city. They are always busy. There should also be composting locations around the city. To me it is more a matter of providing access and incentives. Educating people that they way we have done things for a generation or two is not the way that we have done things forever. Mulching, recycling, hanging clothes to dry, cooking a meal, does not mean one is poor or stupid. It merely indicates one is responsible.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
But it should be made SO EASY and the benefits made SO VISIBLE that peer pressure alone would compel people to participate.
The same goes for recycling.
Actually, it really doesn't decay very well in a landfill. I think somebody went digging in a NYC landfill and found intact newspapers from WWII. Those same papers would compost in a large-scale compost pile in weeks! As for the greenhouse output, no. In a landfill, the decay is anaerobic and results in methane (CH4). In a (properly maintained and aerated) compost pile, the gasses released are mostly CO2. So while, more or less, you end up with the same amount of carbon, CH4 contributes to global warming 25 times more than an equal amount of CO2. (That's why methane reclamation is quite helpful at a landfill, even though you're just burning that CH4 into CO2).
As for the jobs, if you are really cutting down on garbage a lot, then you'll lose some garbage truck drivers in exchange for the gain in compost truck drivers, but there should still be more. And you shouldn't lose any jobs at the landfill itself unless you completely eliminate garbage. Because even if your garbage output is halved, that just means the landfill fills slower and they move on less often. You'll still need employees at the landfill and at the compost piles.
Where I live we now have garbage, recycling, and compost trucks driving around. I don't recall any talk of lost landfill or garbage truck driver jobs.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I live in an apartment and am not gonna keep rotting food in my home. If the city tried to force anything like this on me I would just ignore it.
Please stop calling taxing a service since it's not.
I am all for composting but just like with _everything else_ I think making it possible and showing an example is the way to go, you know freedom of choice and all of that.
An example for you who can't figure out my point: give tax deductions for ppl who compost.
Trouble is that especially in lower-populated areas multiple cities' trash goes into one landfill. Arguably it should be at least a state-level decision.
At this point nobody's saying there should be a federal mandate /anyway/, and with the Republicans doubling down on "LA LA LA YOU'RE NOT A RICH DONOR I CAN'T HEAR YOU" it's not likely to get anywhere in Congress.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
IIRC some brand-new towns designed their sewer system and waste treatment plants to handle large quantities of food waste, and then required all houses to install dispose-alls in the sinks. (and banned dumping food waste into trash, I think). Dunno how successful they were, but I gotta say the concept is much neater, simpler, and more efficient than setting up a whole separate compostables pick-up system.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
charge $2 per garbage bag collected & offer, - unlimited free recycling - unlimited free composting Watch how quickly adoption rates will grow.
Attract Rats, which breed and make more Rats.
Yeah, we started getting rodents in our back yard after our neighbour set up a compost pile. We're not terribly impressed.
at least put stuff in the recycling bins whether it belongs there or not.
If, by "don't degrade quickly" you mean "don't degrade," then you're correct. A local science/technology museum has a (resin-coated) core sample of an old landfill, which has a perfectly recognizable 50 year old head of lettuce about halfway down it.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
"Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities?"
In short: duh!.
Long answer: yeeeeeeees. Everywhere globally.
In the last year i've thrown out less than two grocery bags of trash. (And i'm not some hermit, i race bikes, buy various electronic gadgets, etc..)
Composting is a HUGE way to reduce waste, and am glad my city (Victoria, BC) is finally getting curbside composting as well (Jan 2013.) The last few places i've lived in didn't compost, so i found a neighbour who did, and dropped off compost there instead.
The next biggest step is to reduce consumption - avoid plastic bags and twist ties at the grocery store (i write the #'s on my hand), reuse baggies, etc (wash them!) Go with the bulk section of food stores to reduce packaging.
And finally, recycling - don't just depend on what's picked up at your curb, look into other options. There's a program here called Pacific Mobile Depots, and they recycle nearly everything - styrofoam, electronics and appliances, soft plastic, hard plastic, even tetra paks and foil wrappers from energy bars, etc.. This one runs every Saturday, and sets up different drop off points around the community (my nearest is the 4th Saturday each month).
When you take advantage of all the services that are available to you, it's pretty surprising just how much you can reduce your impact!
I can see not wanting to landfill things that are toxic, don't breakdown, etc. I do not see the point to putting extra effort into food scraps and such? It slows filling the landfill, but will result in the contents of the landfill being more concentrated with plastics, chemicals, etc.
How does composting actually help the planet? I'm honestly confused.
Yes. Instead of making it mandatory, trash services should just charge extra if you can't be bothered to compost. This creates the incentive to compost on your own, while still letting the grouchy types shout "get off my lawn", and it accounts for all the costs.
:(){
I always wondered why they didn't simply implement a program where compostable materials go in brown plastic bags instead of black ones. Then the firms (public or private) can easily compost it. Also individuals with a compost pile looking for some extra organic material to add to their pile can just go pick up brown bags on trash day from people if they want more material.
I thought the Occupy movements were contributing to composting in inner cities?
*rimshot* Thanks, I'll be here all week. Please be sure to tip your waitress.
The government could just refuse to pay for picking up waste that is compostable unless it is separated.
And we could then vote them out at the next election.
You underestimate how this could be spun in campaign ads: "[Rattle off five neighboring areas] raised taxes in the past few years, but we didn't follow their lead. Instead, our city council cut the waste out of waste disposal spending, saving $x per household and providing high-quality compost to nearby farms."
By putting less biological matter in the landfills we change the system within the landfill. But is that change good or bad. Simply painting all composting as good, regardless of the consequences is a poor way to function. For all we know the food waste is what protects the environment from worse poisoning. The same goes for anything we do to "change" or "fix" the world. Our "fix" may upset the balance in the wrong way and make things worse.
"And that sandwich you're eating is made out of old, discarded sandwiches."
I don't see why not.
Let's divert all the biological waste to composting, recover the heat and methane generated. Less greenhouse gasses yay.
If you get into the technical bits, everything, without exception can be recycled, composted or waste-to-energy disposed of. There is no need for landfills for anything but the most toxic of materials (eg asbestos, nuclear waste, pcb's, medicine, etc)
The catch with composting is that it spreads disease. If you, say dump diseased flowers or something into the compost, it might kill the composting flora, or if centrally collected, might spread it around. So it's not perfect, but diseased organic material, fecal material (diapers), and meat/eggs should actually be incinerated so that it doesn't spread diseases that can get into the food cycle.
At some point, possibly in the near future, hopefully sooner rather than later, infrastructure for this type of thing is gonna need to be implemented.
And by that I mean the following:
- for every 16 square blocks (or statistically calibrated effficiency measurement based upon population density, trash production rate, and present/future civil engineering planning), a spot location will need to be incorporated into the suburban and city areas where recycleables, compositing, excess material, and garbage collection will need to instituted.
Have weekly scheduling for materials pick up ... Trash one day, recycleables the next ... composting rotate every other saturday, etc...
If we're to get serious about trash in general and recycling in the future, something we can't really put off since we're creating trash islands in every major ocean, it needs to become part of our common infrastructure, and not a destination several miles away at a large facility, only open once a month or every other weekend.
The golden rule: If it is such a damn good program it wouldn't need to be mandatory.
The only exemption from this rule: Unless the lack of which would be an immediate and direct hazard to the community.
The first warning sign: No private company wants to do it.
The second warning sign: Government wants to do it.
The only reason that state governments make things mandatory is so that they are large enough that you can never see the whole picture. That way they can always tell you how successful things are and you never have enough information to call BS on it before it becomes too big to fail. And the whole time someone is lining their pockets with your tax money which will never seem to be enough every year.
Damn. Can't have that. Come on all you computer geeks, let's get to work automating this sucker.
When we talk about "mandatory" recycling or composting we are talking about one more bin to throw things in that the trash people will pick up. Is it really such and incredible #$%&ing inconvenience for you to throw plastic bottles into one container and food waste into another?
When one bin becomes several (cardboard, glass, plastic, metal, compost, trash) in a cramped studio apartment, yes it does become an inconvenience.
50 years is not an arbitrarily long time. It may take a thousand years, or ten thousand, but it'll degrade eventually.
True, housing prices peaked in 2006, but that bubble began in roughly the late 1990s. Since when has the price of expanding a landfill fallen below the price in 2000, especially taking into account the cost of compliance with regulations from EPA and other agencies?
So many people seem to be taking this issue seriously. Are you really not aware that most "recycling" involves taking everything directly to the nearest dump? It's a political fraud. There isn't any market for recycling goods. To the extent there used to be one, it was before mandatory recycling laws put a glut of these dubious scrap resources on the market. A truckload of old newspapers isn't worth the gas money any more.
There is perhaps one thing that's actually worth recycling: aluminum cans. Aluminum tends to be cheaper to recycle than to produce new. Then again, modern aluminum cans are less than paper-thin, there's not that much aluminum there to recycle.
It's impressive, especially if it's small enough to turn frequently, has an appropriate nitrogen-to-carbon ratio, and contains mostly small pieces of material.
Requiring a person to compost doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to track all online purchases in order to correctly pay sales taxes doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to move their car for street cleaning doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to register their vehicle once per year doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to insure their house doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to sort recycling doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to fill out tax forms doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to tell each credit card company about an address change doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to check their child's homework doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to visit with teachers doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to install a garbage disposal doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to remember a single bit of paperwork doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to remove snow from their sidewalk promptly doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to keep their lawn trimmed doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to track all expenditures for taxes doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Requiring a person to keep tax records for a few years doesn't really inconvenience that person very much.
Citation please? According to the American Cancer Society, the average 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is only 6%. (http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@nho/documents/document/acspc-024113.pdf) Jobs died eight years after his first diagnosis meaning he lived longer than 94% of people with pancreatic cancer, so I'd say he beat the odds regardless of his choice of treatment.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Of course, the "composting" they are referring to includes mixing the compost with biosolids - better known as sewage plant sludge. By giving it the nice veneer of "compost" - that friendly stuff that we have in our compost heap in the back yard - they can "green" biosolids. No one wants to put sludge on a farmer's field - so it magically becomes compost and no one cares.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
All that is competition for a resource. Tragedy of the commons involves a resource that has to be managed, to maintain its usefulness.
Because some of those moderately healthy people will still suffer from disease or injury that will incur large healthcare costs. The whole point of insurance is that it spreads those costs around. While you may be lucky enough to not find that you have a congenital heart defect that costs $100,000 in surgery to correct, your premium helps pay for that one guy out of 100,000 that does. And it means that the public doesn't have to pay your healthcare costs if you do suffer from an illness that carries catastrophic healthcare costs.
Spot on. And I want to stress the congenital part there—a lot of congenital conditions go undetected until a person hits their late 20s or early 30s, just because they were otherwise healthy and asymptomatic. So just after they've been trained or educated and they're entering their prime work and childrearing years, a previously hidden health condition catches up with them and saddles them with unbearable financial burdens for the rest of their lives.
Anybody who thinks they are one of these proverbial "young healthy people who don't need insurance" doesn't really know it. And basically, they're choosing to opt out of the only sort of system that could protect them from that.
Are you adequate?
So does nobody think that if composting is mandatory then it will have the same impact on a community as the logistics of maintaining a growing landfill? You remove x amount of waste from the landfill meaning that x amount of waste has to be stored and processed somewhere else. If mandatory in a community then this will greatly increase the amount of land required to collect, store and process compost. Sure, the landfills will grow more slowly, but the net effect is that more land is required to process compost. If the ultimate goal was to reduce the burden of waste on your community then you failed. The moment a "green" solution is introduced everyone jumps on the bandwagon and want it rammed down our throats and anybody that disagrees (i.e. actually thinks about the problem and collects the facts) is immediately dismissed as an uncaring *sshole. The biggest threat to humankind is the "green" movement. I have never heard of so many stupid policies and ideas thrown about as with people trying to be green. Stop, think and then apply rational solutions to these problems. Moving tons of waste away from a landfill only requires tones of waste to be processed somewhere else. Compost != puppies and unicorns.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If money can be made from composting and recycling, then the suppliers of the raw materials should be paid.
Yeah, it's called "not raising your tax rate this year".
The kind of tards that insist on claiming they cook everything from scratch also LOVE the idea of composting.
And if you cook everything from scratch, then what is so hard to separate? What raw ingredients come in so many different kinds of glass?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just pick the cheapest land and turn it in to a landfill. Use the army. There is no non-psychological bebefit to any of this environmental bull. If yuppies want ego boo let them bribe the rest of us with their pesonal money. For $100 a month I would consider composting. Otherwise I won't do it and no one can make me. I'll shoot the cop or move or die first.
the true libertarian answer to the problem of garbage is NO trash pickup whatsoever. I'm tired of subsidizing every stupid company that wants to wrap something in superfluous plastic.
if you sell me packaging, I should be able to compost it or burn it in my wood stove.
Without unsustainable and dangerous landfilling to subsidize industry, maybe we'd: 1) use reusable food containers at the store 2) stop eating pre-packaged junk 3) compost locally, which, energetically, makes a hell of a lot more sense than hauling everything in massive trucks.
Where I live in Canada we've had a 3 bin system for a long time.. garbage, recyclables, and organic waste. Nothing is mandated, as far as I know, but recycle/organic comes once a week, whereas garbage comes every other week. This is not a big issue, and it's really easy to just separate stuff while you're doing things..
So uh, what's the issue?
For those who have been to Japan, I think the U.S. and here in Canada have it pretty damned easy compared to there.
City wide composting is a novelty? You guys still use landfills? That's like the 1970s.
you could grow up and stop expecting everyone else to do all of your work for you at their expense.
This whole idea of recycling, composting what ever, may be a good idea. I don't know, and simply do not care.
In the US, when we're done with stuff, we're done with it, it goes in the bag(s), can(s) and gets hauled away. Who hauls it away, is not important. Its hauled away. If Goodwill, Salvation Army, AMVETS, etc come and get stuff, fine. If its the waste removal, fine.
Do NOT expect or worse DEMAND that US residents are going to put any more effort than sticking it in a bag/can/bin/ and/or dragging it to the curb. Its not going to happen.
If you want to recycle my cans, plastics, etc.. then here it is! Its in this nice bag/can/bin! Haul it away, do what you want with it!
But.... its mixed in with the cat litter, food stuffs! Yeah, and your point is?!?? You should separate this into recyclables, and non recyclables.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTT! YOU JUST FAILED recycling 101 in the US! DO NOT EXPECT ANY RESIDENT except the drugged out tree hugger hippies to do that! Heres my waste, if its got recycleables then you need to haul it away to the transfer station which has a separation area to sort cans, papers, plastics to be recycled. Jane Consumer is NOT going to do it for you! Period. They don't care!
You may be able to get residents in the UK, EU, Asia, etc. to do this , but it will not fly en masse in the US. Same with composting... you want my grass clippings, lawn waste, here you go! BUT ITS IN A PLASTIC BAG! Yeah, and your point is? ? ? ? First, if you think I am bagging up lawn clippings YOUR NUTS! MULCH ATTACHMENT BABY! Has nothing to do with the environment! Other lawn waste... trekked off to the buffer green space, just like everyone else in the neighborhood! Again. if you want it, I will do a very minimal amount of collection and ready for pick up. After that, your on you own! Nope I am not putting in a special bag, or an even more special bag that I have to purchase at some revenue generating price from the local village/borough/township/city/county extortion department. I went to the local mega mart of choice and got the big old lawn bags and stuff my crap in them! Here you go!
So make all the plans you want for recycling so long as, at least in the US, they include how YOU are going to handle a mixed waste stream and feed recycle/composting, leftover to burn for electric from that mixed stream.
It makes no difference whether you put something in the garbage or the compost bin. In both cases the organic garbage ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the garbage is converted into methane (not CO2) within the landfill, that methane is captured and burnt, and thereby converted into CO2. Since 1996, the EPA has mandated that all larger landfills must capture and burn methane (google the "Landfill Rule" and look at the EPA site). As a result, it makes no difference whether you compost or not. Nor does it save landfill space, since the organic garbage is converted to a gas which then escapes.
Composting is not the most efficient way to prevent methane emissions. It's almost certainly more cost-efficient to burn landfill gas, since that accomplishes the same thing without costly human labor spent on sorting and inspecting garbage. Even if you live in a country that does not burn landfill gas, you should support landfill gas burning rather than mandatory composting.
Composting has no value. It's like local food, organic food, recycling of paper and glass, biofuels, and so on. They make no difference to the environment, or are positively harmful to the environment (local food, organic food, biofuels). (In fact, organic food and biofuels would be catastrophic to the environment if used extensively). The purpose is to give hippies the feel-good, low-tech, back-to-the-land lifestyle which they always wanted, and to impose that lifestyle upon others. Whether it helps the environment is irrelevant and ignored.
The two most important things you can do to help the environment are: 1) live in a high-rise apartment building in the densest urban area possible, since urban dwellers emit a small fraction of the CO2 as suburban and rural dwellers; and 2) support nuclear power. Both of these are vehemently opposed by greenies who spend their time on worthless symbolic activities like composting. This shows that they either don't know what will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or they just don't care.
welcome to the world of the plastic beach.
Vermicomposting can turn table scraps into soil in a couple weeks, not months. Very easy to do at home too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
and while I was initially worried about the biweekly collection of regular trash I find that it works really well - I am amazed at how clean the regular trash is now that food scraps have been removed from it.
We are not running out of land to build them. And the current area devoted to landfills is miniscule.
Greenhouse gasses can be collected by landfills. They methane can be harvested. I doubt a compost heap will do that; you need a cover.
This sounds like an boondoggle.
create incentives. positive ones.
Only when it applies to politicians and sports figures. They're already full of enough manure to create a self-substaining process.
I think people just don't understand what composting is. Education is necessary. Example:
I just moved into a new neighborhood and everyone here has a small bit of land and trees. The houses are nearby to woods. I am shocked to find that everyone rakes their leaves and throws them away in the Monday yard waste pick-up. What are they doing!?!?!?!? Do people not realize that you are throwing away your soil when you do this? So one Sunday evening I got up and took all my neighbors nicely bagged leaves and composted them in the woods behind my house. My yard has trees, but it barely grows grass. The ground is clay about an inch below the surface. The tree roots are sticking up from the ground from years of losing topsoil. Some of the neighbors use Chemlawn. Why would you throw away your fertile soil, then pay someone to spray it with an artificial version? The only reason I can figure is that they just don't understand what they are doing.
At least it doesn't go out with the trash. I think the county lets you get free bags of compost in the summer, so maybe the smart ones can at least get their own land back once they wise up.
Reminds me of the headline on the last Time magazine I got before canceling my subscription. It was a few years ago. "DOES THE SUPREME COURT STILL MATTER?"
I was disappointed that the article itself was more than 3 letters long.
As someone that recycles a bunch, and has spent a fair amount of time around transfer stations and landfills, I can tell you that even if we skip right past the Reduction and Reuse components of the 3 Rs, if the following were recyclable at the curbside in every area rather than just in some areas, and if recycling was made compulsory, landfill usage would shrink by around 80%:
.I see so many bags of grass, tree branches, etc. that the front-end loaders have difficulty piling it up.
Cardboard On any given day this material alone counts for roughly 20% of my local transfer station's haul.
Landscaping refuse
Paperboard This is the majority of food packaging, and covers most junk mail that isn't 'crumple-able'.
Food The amount of food we waste in the U.S. is staggering. Before my own family made conscious changes were were wasting 25-30% of everything we brought home. Thanks to variable work hours, even with careful planning we still waste 5-10% each week. If you think of the total mass of food you consume in a week, this quickly adds up across your local population. In restaurant-laden areas like San Francisco, especially with all of the buffets in Chinatown, the food waste is exponentially higher (did you see the Dirty Jobs episode where Mike spent a shift with the garbage collectors? Sheesh.)
Appliances (you'd be surprised by how many of these hit the transfer station every day. The workers line them up along the edge of the property, because their company sells the items to recyclers).
Since we reduced the amount of stuff we bring to the house, learned how to reuse a lot of stuff (such as composting), and learned how and where to recycle the rest, our 95-gallon trash bin only goes to the curb two or three times a year (and that's mostly due to shipping styrofoam and combination materials that cannot be recycled).
Which is worse, a potentially recyclable plastic bottle in a landfill, or a bottle of the wrong/contaminated plastic in the recycle bin?
I try to err of the side of not spoiling the recycling efforts of others. If it's clearly the right type, I'll put it into the right bin... but what about the soda can my friend used as an ashtray? prescription bottles for toxic drugs? soiled paper? (locally pizza delivery boxes are supposed to be composted, so how about the donut boxes?) glass that wasn't from a bottle (window glass), etc. etc. What about the bag of salad I got recently that had Salmonella in it?, should that be composted and spread around, or 'thrown away' like the health department instructed?
I live in Lower Asscrack (small midwestern city) on a 1/4 acre lot and my wife and I have been composting for years. We rake the leaves and use them as mulch for the flowerbeds and garden, and compost vegetables etc. which is raked into the soil in the spring. We aren't serious about gardening but it's really no big deal and it's kind of neat to see a hundred pounds of vegetable matter/plants etc. turn into nice rich black peaty compost. After doing this for about 10 years we have some excellent soil as the leaves from years ago have turned into topsoil by now.
I lived in Boulder, CO for a while recently. There are like 5 recycle buckets. But you figure it out. For those people who are moaning about having to figure out what recyclables go where: EABOD and STFU you whiny vaginas. Such a small inconvenience clearly will not ruin you busy important lives.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
This is exactly why it should be a decision for the city. I live in a fairly remote small town. We have lots of land, a small population, and lots of transportation problems outside our small valley. Some recycling that is economical in a large city is not in our small town. Mandatory centralized composting would add tremendous cost to our trash disposal for minimal (if any) benefit. Our town is geographically isolated, and unlikely to grow significantly above it's current 25K population. It would take us thousands of years to fill our landfill, and if we did there are hundreds of thousands of acres of unpopulated land right next to it.
That should provide enough compost to fertilize the entire Midwest.
Compost is rotting food. There is a reason why it is more tenable in suburban or rural environments. "Composting in most major U.S. cities" means having foot rot in highly densely populated areas. To look at other "successful" composting programs check out Calcutta or Port-au-Prince...
I live in a small suburban house and i stopped composting after about a week because i hated smelling rotting food around my home. No matter where i took that damn bucket the thing just stunk my yard, or the side of my house, or my garden up so bad i couldn't take it. Can't imagine being forced to do it out of fear of ticketing.
..if the government will pay me $30/hour or so to do it.
The first assumption that we shouldn't use landfills is wrong in a country that doesn't have a shortage of land. On an island with finite land, I agree. Most important scarce resource right now is oil. Before any of the landfill hype began, about the time of the infamous garbage barge in the 80's all MSW was collected by one truck, one diesel engine. Now you generally have three engines, MSW, recyclable, Organics(compostables.). Three times the fuel usage. Waste collection companies love it, now they bill for three services. Now on to post collection. Landfills still run on diesel, dozers, compactors, ADTs, excavators, etc. MRFs use diesel and elec off the grid. Compost sites mainly use diesel some stationary sites also use elec. At the landfill the fuel usage is mostly done after waste is packed. Organics here begin to produce LFG which is often used for power generation for 30 years, 800 acre landfill could produce 10-20 MW elec. Compost end products are now marketed and shipped with more diesel. And on to the big winner of the waste stream, Recyclables alot is not most of the non ferous plastics and paper product go where? Yep China. Diesel moves recyclables to ports where more diesel Or elec loads them on cargo ships that burn Bunk oil (search how much oil And pollutants are discharged by freighters) half way round the world. Diesel and elec unloads the ship and diesel transports it to the factories without air pollution controls like most of the developed world. New crap is made from the recyclables and loaded on trucks that use diesel to port, Bunk to the world markets, diesel from the ports to the WalMart distribution centers and finally more diesel to the stores. So in the olden days a truck and a few pieces of Yellow Iron would manage our waste now we drop dollars to pick up pennies and use more of our main scarce resource then ever. NIMBY for sure. The choice is yours society, industry will do whatever you want but don't be short sited because you think landfills are bad without knowing why. Last point is most landfill pollution issues can be managed but once that diesel and emmisions from factories is in the air it's unmanageable.
I believe every city in America should make composting/recycling mandatory. We should be attempting to reduce/reuse/recycle as much as possible. It is not too difficult to put cans/glass/plastic in one container, paper in another, and compost-able items in another. Our future (and I'm not just talking about the distant future) will thank us for it.
SF's composting law caused businesses to compost edible food that they used to send to charities for people to eat. Yay good intentions!
They should NOT be putting rodent-friendly stuff in them. Meat, dog shit, etc.
I say no - not because composting isn't a worthwhile endeavor, but it is not the most sustainable option in every circumstance - particularly if there is no market for the compost. You can't force people to buy it and economic viability is a critical measure of sustainability. Anaerobic digestion is better for wet feedstock while thermochemical CTs are better for dry.
Other sustainable options are conversion technnologies (CTs) that generate power or produce fuels for which there are nearly limitless markets. These technologies are becoming cleaner and less expensive every year. Pyrolysis, gasification, plasma arc, acid hydrolysis, enzymatic hydrolysis, are the subject of my http://bioconversion.blogspot.com.
I would recommend mandating fewer landfills (as they do in Europe) while providing municipalities the authority to decide which technology and output option is the most sustainable for that location.