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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.'"
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.
I disagree with this. Composting being mandatory is a good thing. Our landfills are filling up quickly and something has to be done about it - having the government regulating this is good for society overall, as most individuals won't do it out of their own will, even knowing that it's the right thing to do.
Composting serves more purposes than just decreasing the amount of stuff in landfills. It minimizes pests on landfills, as compostable material won't be available to grow the pest population. Compost can be sold to farms to help grow crops, which gives money back to the government and savings back to the farms.
well the city is providing the service of trash hauling. they can pretty much choose not to haul away organic matter. You don't have to compost, but they won't pick up that trash (or trash with organic matter unsorted inside of it). You may feel free to contract someone to haul away your unsorted trash. There. your rights are no longer being violated.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Not a relevant comparison - if you are hiring a licensed waste disposal company, they will either require you to sort the waste and charge you a penalty for failing to do so, or the cost of their doing the sorting will be included in their upfront fee. Final disposal will be carried out as required by local ordinance. You won't notice the difference. If you take the waste to the landfill yourself, you'll be required to sort it out per local regulations and you'll just _wish_ you had sorted it out properly at home.
And no, it's not your right to dispose of your waste as you like; this is a classic tragedy of the commons, arguably precisely the sort of problem humanity developed the concept of government to cope with.
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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).
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".
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Or more likely, just refuse to collect garbage with substantial compostable materials.
We have a composing program here and it works fine. As a Canadian, the standard selfish American "fuck that shit" response to this kind of stuff is always humorous. I mean my god.. when you eat a banana, you toss the peel into a different bin. Tiny bit of effort, huge benifits to everyone! American response: "HAWR I PAY TAXES WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO THAT SHIT!!"
Silly question... if it is headed to a landfill, isn't it being 'composted' anyway? We are burying it, after all.
You're confusing "out of sight, out of mind" with composting or even proper disposal. Throwing the refuse on the ground and covering it with clay or other earth isn't thought out other than just getting rid of it.
Took a few decades for dumb humans to realize you couldn't just throw those electronics under the dirt and not expect Lead, Mercury, Chromium, PCB/PBB, etc, to show up one day in the well water. Driving through the Desert West, slowing down and taking a short walk off road frequently reveals the extent of communities to just assume putting something over there in the weeds was a good enough way to dispose of it - quite a lot of rubbish in the desert, over 50 years old and still sitting there, it didn't go away - consider Douglas Adams' concept of SEP, these dumping grounds, to the present, seem to radiate a strong SEP Field - though eventually they come back to us in some way.
Planning for disposal, recycling and composting should be part of any municipal plan, where larger cities can take advantage of an economy of scale to reduce initial cost. There's only so much land available for landfill and then what? The San Francisco Bay area has huge mounds of landfill around the South Bay, likely something in each of these will seep into the Bay, water table and food chain in some way. Shouldn't be doing these kinds of dumps anymore, but they still do.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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This is the easy way to deal with it. You have a "PAYT" (Pay As You Throw) system with recyclables and compost taken for free. You incentivize the behavior you want, instead of mandating it.
"Plastic, but not this type, paper not including newspaper, x glass but not y glass". Pain in the ass.
Really? Come on; how lazy can you get?
The city I live in started recycling pickup a month or so ago, I just put the recyclables list up on the fridge. Problem fucking solved.
Ya pain in the ass, but basically they are saying "we will provide this service as long as you obey the rules". Put stuff where it doesn't belong and your service should be stopped. You figure out what to do with your own garbage - you created it after-all, it is your responsibility not the responsibility of the rest of us.
AccountKiller
You've framed the question wrong. How about this one: "Should the rest of us be mandated to take your garbage if you don't sort it properly?" That is your X, therefore by your own logic, the answer is No. You don't want to sort your garbage? Then you figure out what to do with it, it isn't going in the public landfill.
AccountKiller
This is why I consider Libertarians imbeciles. Replace X with "driving on the right side of the road (or left when in Britain)". . . . . . Still think the answer is "No"?
Ayup. "Should not killing your neighbors be mandatory?"
"Should not putting rats and rotting meat into hamburger that you're selling the unsuspecting public be mandatory?"
Life is too complicated to put into a saying that is simple, short, and wrong, for all that the simplicity attracts imbeciles.
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E pluribus sanguinem
Yes, it is a pain in the ass.
I don't have room in my kitchen to keep 3-5 different garbage cans sitting there to keep everything separated. I have ONE can, when it gets full, I tie up the bag, and throw it into my outdoor can. Again..I don't really have room outside to keep multiple smelly garbage cans full of my discarded crap.
And no...I don't want to have to stop and think about what goes into what can when I'm busy cooking multiple things in the kitchen...I have limited time and I don't want to have to pause whenever I'm moving fast and think "which fucking can does this go into"?
If others want to take up valuable space inside and outside their house and put forth all this effort, fine...but don't require me to.
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So road safety regulations are communist? Regulations on sewage disposal are communist? Regulations on what kinds of RF emitting devices you may operate in your backyard are communist?
Well, if preventing individuals from harming the commonality is communist, I urgently need to raise a few red flags.
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The city I live in started recycling pickup a month or so ago, I just put the recyclables list up on the fridge. Problem fucking solved.
I visited the US earlier this year, and was surprised how few recycling bins there were. I saw one in a park, and one (for glass only) at a traveller's hostel.
I spent the first couple of days wandering around with empty bottles in my bag, until I realised recycling just didn't happen. Googling shows one city does kerbside collection, but not in the centre, and the other has a pilot project. Neither had anywhere for me to put an empty drink can while walking in the street.
It varies by municipality: many cities do it as a taxpayer-provided service, for others each homeowner contracts with some private firm, many smaller communities do haul-your-own to a transfer station open during some hours of the week.
And I would argue that, no, if your city has taxpayer-funded trash pickup and you decide to DIY, you can't opt out of paying for it, no more so than you can line-item this or that taxpayer-funded service. You live in the community, you pay for the community services whether you yourself utilize them or not - it's not an a la carte menu. This is true for schools (even those that don't have school-aged children, or those that home-school), emergency services, sewers, homeless shelters, dogcatcher, whatever. Not having the gutters full of rotting trash is a benefit to everyone (i.e., you might haul your trash yourself, but you benefit from not having your deadbeat neighbors' trash floating by).
Don't like it? Run for office and get it changed. Got a gripe with the social contract that we are all in this society together? Move to another country. Some services are more specialized, and therefore are paid for fees rather than taxes (e.g., automobile registration fees that support road maintenance). Some are a combination: municipal water services often are funded by a mix of taxes and fees. The taxes go largely to the fixed costs of having a water plant and distribution system, while the fees (utility bills) track with usage.
You don't understand LIBERTARIAN principles.
Libertarians are not against rules. They are against rules that don't apply equally to all people equally. In this case, Libertarian policy would be offering discount/option for doing Green/Compostable for those that wish it. Additionally, since this is a health issue (Sanitation) there are rules that apply so that no harm comes to others.
Making it mandatory that all people to use Compost Services using municipal service is wrong. What if I want to make my compost, you think charging me for that service should be mandatory?
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