Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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)
Plenty of people in the US go without treatment because they can't afford it. The only treatment everyone is entitled to is emergency care, which is generally a bit too late.
No, a landfill is an anaerobic environment. Organic material in a landfill barely decays at all once it has been covered and sealed.
"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.
To quote Buckminster Fuller, "Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value." The fact that you apparently take great pride in your ignorance is not as disturbing as the fact that there are millions of people just like you, people who think it's their right to throw paint and used motor oil into "properly managed landfills." You're deluding yourself and poisoning the rest of us.
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 #$%&ing inconvenience for you to throw plastic bottles into one container and food waste into another? Are you really that incredibly unfathomably unconscionably lazy or are you just too incompetent to properly sort your waste into three different categories or is it just that you are so ridiculously self-centered that you really think having to sort the waste you dump into your local community is some kind of violation of your human rights?
I met people like you at the hobby shop where I used to work when I put out a recycling bin. Some of the teenagers actually refused to throw their cans in the bin claiming I was forcing my hippy environmentalist beliefs on them and it was their right to not have to throw an aluminum can into a separate #$%&ing bin. I don't believe this is about civil rights, it's about an absurd over-inflated sense of entitlement. My stereotype of people who think like you is that you live in a rural community or sprawling suburb. Luckily, people who live in the city understand there are small inconveniences, like throwing food into a separate bin to reduce strains on overflowing landfills, that we accept to make life easier for all of us.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Well, the problem is that landfills are actually *made* to handle toxic substances, so filling them up with things that don't belong there wastes *lots* of money and time. They usually put landfills in empty rock quarries, so that the waste doesn't leach into the soil and water system. In addition, they are usually treated in such a way as to encourage it *not* to break down, and therefore it is less of a hazard. If you spend all of that landfill area on stuff that *could* be composted away, you are just wasting valuable space.
Engineering and the Ultimate
And as for healthcare, no one goes without treatment
I'm sorry, but that's a right-wing myth with no basis in fact whatever. You have to be treated in an emergency room, but only the truly indigent get it free.
My best friend, who I'd known since we were teenagers, had a job with no health benefits. He caught appendicitis and was treated in the ER. It destroyed his credit and impoverished him and his family, and took most of a decade to clear.
The next time he had symptoms that one should tale to the ER, he died.
Because of this I'd probably flame you if I wasn't sure you're simply misinformed.
Free Martian Whores!