Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities? 861
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.'"
Should X be mandatory? (Score:3, Insightful)
For all non-negative values of X the answer is:
No
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Cut the waste out of waste disposal spending (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Should X be paid for by taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
4-6 bags, doing what?! I do 1 bag every 2 weeks, and it's not always full. They do recycling and trash pickups on alternating weeks here.
Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say the city of Chicago throws its bureaucratic hands in the air and cancels any city-supported trash collection. A whole bunch of new and existing companies jump on this hugely expanded market, and households/buildings start paying individually for their trash collection. (We'll ignore for now the huge inefficiency of having multiple companies sending trucks down a single alley each emptying a small subset of the bins).
But what happens in the poorer neighborhoods, where a number of households will likely find it more efficient to just dump their trash in the vacant lot or unused portion of the alley than to pay to have it picked up? There might be fewer companies willing to service these areas, and prices for collection may be higher. Before long the underprivileged communities are loaded with garbage, rats and disease. Impromptu mismanaged landfills, blocked alleys, decomposing and non-decomposable waste everywhere. All of a sudden trash collection looks a lot like a civil liberties issue. Or even if you take an individualist well-that's-their-problem-they-shouldn't-be-so-poor stance, this would affect the whole city in terms of public health, sewer water management, ER visits, etc.
Despite the appeal of the libertarian ideal of everybody taking responsibility for just themselves, it simply doesn't work in the real world. We're all in it together and, no matter how frustrating it is, our actions unavoidably affect one another.
Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Every community built in the last 20 years in my city has an HOA.* All of them restrict composting. And, were the city not negotiating a bulk-rate for trash collection on our behalf (from a private service provider), I suspect that every HOA would do the same and mandate that its residents use it (at a higher rate since each one wouldn't be as strong in negotiation).
In the absence of government, private industry does a plenty good job stepping in with regulation. And costs don't really go down.
* And the older ones all cost prohibitively more due to location.
Should X be a condition for Y service? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should X be a condition for Y service? (Score:5, Insightful)
Around here we went mandatory on composting a few years back. It wasn't anywhere near the infringement on our liberties that a lot of libertarians would have you believe. We had to get the service unless we composted the items ourselves. IIRC there was a boost to the trash collection fee that went into effect about that time as well.
So, we had the option of composting ourselves or arranging for it to be composted by somebody else.
But, ultimately, it is a matter of the social contract, landfill space isn't unlimited and if communities take recycling and composting seriously the total cost that they pay can definitely decrease. We saw a similar situation with water use. We pay more more a gallon of water than they do in most parts of the country, but it's incredibly clean and over all our water bill is still substantially lower than it is elsewhere.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"?
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly why Libertarianism tends to be so appealing to nerds. It's premised on the idea that everything in life can be solved by inserting variables into a simple formula. It's also premised on the idea that they've actually figured out what that formula is.
The definition of nerd seems to have changed. In times of yore, a nerd would have been the one to realize that there is no simple formula, but instead a huge, ill-defineable system of differential equations - and to take pride and enjoyment in trying to solve it. Simple formulas used to be for the jocks...
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Funny)
For all non-negative values of X the answer is:
No
In my perfect libertarian world, whoever gets to the intersection firstest with the mostest guns wins. Stopping or even slowing down would never be mandatory, unless you're one of those bitches driving a Prius.
And shouting "Fire!" in that mythical crowded theatre is okay, but shouting "Firepower!" and following it up with a few rounds into the ceiling is even better.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
....Considering I pay the city for trash pick up (and where I am, we actually pay private firms.. the city does not provide trash pick up) they should be the ones to sort it, in my opinion. If I can pay more and not do my own sorting, I'm all for it. Everywhere I have been that makes you sort recyclables has been way too picky about what can and can't be recycled. "Plastic, but not this type, paper not including newspaper, x glass but not y glass". Pain in the ass.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Funny)
Technically, Ramen noodles and the flavor pack that goes in it do not really count as cooking multiple things...
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're overestimating the amount of time / work / brain power segregating waste will take.
After a couple of weeks to a month, it'll be second nature to you. You don't waste time thinking about which shoe goes to your left foot do you?
As for a compelling reason, you'd have to search that one out for yourself. For me, I just see it as something sensible thing to do - it's efficient.
Anyways, a city ordinance would be a great compelling reason. :P
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Informative)
The county where my parents live uses prisoners to sort trash into recyclables and non-recyclables. Don't assume that just because there is no bin that there is not recycling.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Interesting)
"If recycling made sense, companies would be paying me for the time I spend recycling. Since they don't, it clearly doesn't make sense."
We had this discussion 30 years ago in Europe and it showed that having to pay for your waste by the kilo made enthusiastic recyclers, you just have to raise the price enough.
So in a sense you get paid if you recycle as much as you can.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
If recycling made sense, companies would be paying me for the time I spend recycling. Since they don't, it clearly doesn't make sense.
You mean just like Open Source programming?
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
I remember that episode. They failed to take into account the benefit of less shit making it's way into landfills, meaning that they don't get full as much, and last longer.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Informative)
Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit! on recycling a few years ago. Their conclusion was that aluminum recycling (and some other scrap metals) was the only economical form of recycling (which was why you saw so many people dumpster-diving for cans). Every other form is just a money-pit. With most of this stuff, it costs more to recycle it than to make it new. It's just a feel-good thing for the most part. It's why no one will pay you for your used glass, plastic, and paper--but will for aluminum and some other metals.
I guess that's why their show is called "Bullshit." Link [popularmechanics.com]
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
Let me fill you in on one of the real reasons recycling happens. Environmentally, recycling anything besides metal is not always all that green. For instance, recycling paper often involves a lot more power than making new paper, not to mention all of the nasty detergents and chemicals that can end up leaking into the water table.
A blog post written by a fifth grader is not a citation. Try this citation [popularmechanics.com] instead. And to your point about paper, even the juvenile essay you cited states that processing virgin wood pulp releases more toxic chemicals than recycled paper.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem of plastics is simply a case of "does it have the recycling symbol on it, or not". Even that seems to be moot these days (I'm assuming someone passed a law to say that all plastics containers must be able to be recycled, because I haven't seen a non-recyclable bit of plastic for years).
To be honest though, even with the councils previous "sort everything" system, I never found it to be too hard. Just collect your recycling in a single box, and sort it when you put it into the bins. It takes what, 2 minutes at most? Not exactly a high price to pay to keep it from being buried in the countryside....
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, the US government is stupid because you're too lazy to remember (or post a chart on your fridge) what #s are recyclable and what ones aren't?
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
state-worship
You should have put that at the beginning of your post so that we could know there's no reason to take you seriously.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
When I'm done with it...it is trash and I pay to have it hauled away. Once they have it...feel free to do with it as you please, but I don't have room around my place for sorting the shit out nor for creating and maintaining a compost heap for organic stuff.
That's the problem -- trash is not always "trash" - there are different types of trash, and not all of it should be sitting in a landfill for the next 1000 years because there are better ways to dispose of it.
No one is asking you to maintain a compost heap, just dump your compostables into a different bin. I live in a small urban apartment in the USA and have no problem finding a place to store my compostables, recyclables and landfill materials. I've been part of a municipal compost program for years, and it's just not that hard.
My girlfriend and I lived in a *tiny* apartment in Tokyo for 2 years and had no problem storing our burnable trash and two kinds of recyclable trash.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!!"
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Funny)
As an American, I'm impressed with your keen understanding that he speaks for all 310,000,000 of us.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, listen to Rush Limbaugh once in a while. As far as he's concerned, the only thing stopping the US from being the conservative paradise that an overwhelming majority of citizens wants it to be is a small, dedicated cadre of highly-trained political saboteurs and brainwashing experts known as liberals.
Re: (Score:3)
His type certainly act like they do.
True enough, although it's not like that sort of grandstanding isn't found all over the ideological map.
Seriously, listen to Rush Limbaugh once in a while. As far as he's concerned, the only thing stopping the US from being the conservative paradise that an overwhelming majority of citizens wants it to be is a small, dedicated cadre of highly-trained political saboteurs and brainwashing experts known as liberals.
I've listened to him in small doses, and agree that he sounds like that. But then, I suppose that sort of hysteria sells radio ad time.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Informative)
As an American, I'm impressed with your keen understanding that he speaks for all 310,000,000 of us.
As an American, I'd say he comes pretty close to the sentiment of a significant portion of our population. He did forget to include some liberal bashing and failed to toss around the word "socialism" but otherwise I think he got the general tone right.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Informative)
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!!"
Sadly, the American way of disposing of rubbish, the sanitation department won't take or will charge to collect, is to put it in your auto and drive to some empty road, abandoned neighborhood or ravine near a road and give it a heave. Too damn much of that going on already.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This in contrast to the last attempt at curbside recycling they tried where I lived at the time. What the city did was mandate recycling, then charge EXTRA for it.
Oddly enough, people ignored them in droves, and they had to give the program up as a bad idea...
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Oh good grief. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on, most american can't even dispose of their trash properly, asking them to compost would make their nose bleed.
That's what they said in my city. Then the city implemented an easy system, and most people, and I really mean most of them, now recycle habitually. Don't underestimate people. They might surprise you.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
My city doesnt enforce recycling at the curb level. All garabage gets hauled to a regional seperation facility. There the trash gets seperated by machines paper, plastics, metals, etc by doing it that way you pay slightly more but you dont need 6 different bins on the curb of every home getting blown around by storms.
Of course my city also does leaf and tree pickup for free too. That stuff gets mulched/ composted, etc.
Like power plants and eater treatment somethings are better done on a massive scale
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an enormous difference, and you seemed to have utterly missed the point of contention in your attempt to simplify this down to "clearly X is more important to Y". Notably, there are questions as to the government's role, the Federal government's specific role as it relates to residents of a particular states, the authority of a local government, and whether it is an acceptable use of power to mandate a private good be purchased simply for being alive.
You will note that this doesnt seem to be suggesting a federal mandate, which again would fall afoul of a number of really important principles.
Listen, what happens to our planet in 500 years is really really important. What happens to our government in the next 20 is also really important, and if you start violating important principles of one (such as limitations of power and separation of local and federal power) for the other, Im not sure that you can call it a net win. A pristine planet in an orwellian society doesnt really appeal to me, and its why these battles are so important to fight.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, all that intelligence and so much ignorance to show for it. You live today to enjoy what you think you have because others died for you to have it.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
That is bullshit. People go without treatment all the time. The only guaranteed medical service is life saving emergency medical service. And that will still bankrupt everyone with middle class income or less. When you have to choose between eating for a month and going to a doctor for a checkup, most people decide to eat and let their medical conditions go undiagnosed and untreated until they die.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have a problem with paying people who keep people alive. What I have a problem with is people saying that keeping you alive should cost more than you can earn in the rest of your life. What I have a problem with is basic medical care costing as much as the food or rent payed by working poor people who have no money to spare.
The people saving lives will be paid, but the person who's life is being saved should not be held hostage, starved, kicked from their home, enslaved or left to die in order for that to happen.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Recycling (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
Re: (Score:3)
You're kidding, right? If you're poor (or rather, poor but not poor enough to qualify for medicare/medicaid) and have a serious problem, you go without treatment right to the verge of death, at which point they'll hook you up to a machine that will keep you alive for a few months until you finally croak.
My parents have medical insurance and still ended up with $40k in medical bills last year just for things that keep them walking and breathing. And they're really not in bad shape for people of their age (
Re:Recycling (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Recycling (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless Im mistaken, if nothing changes having healthcare is/will be mandatory as well. However I see no reason why those of us who are moderately healthy should be forced to carry health insurance if we don't want to. If every driver in the US is supposed to have instance why do all insurance companies make paying customers pay for "uninsured motorist" coverage?
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.
A good idea, but ... (Score:3)
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.
Re:A good idea, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mandatory? No, people should be doing this because it makes good business sense.
This may be one of those cases where it makes good business sense medium-to-long term, but is a loss in short term (because you have to break up the existing arrangements first). And long-term efficiency is not in favor these days.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:decision for each city (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Recycle (Score:3)
Composting Makes Garbage Cleanner (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
I actually use both a home composter _and_ my city's curbside food scraps collection (called the "green bin"). The reason is that the green bin will accept a much broader range of materials, because they are ground up and hot composted.
All vegetable matter goes into my home composter, but bones, fat, tissues, paper towels, and pet waste go in the green bin. Between composting, green bin, and recycling, I'll sometimes go 3-4 weeks without bothering to take my garbage to the curb, because the bin just isn't
No (Score:3)
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 do people bag yard waste? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Why do people bag yard waste? (Score:4, Informative)
Now I will mulch as much as I can but it still leaves me a huge pile of.. leaves.. that I put out in front of my house for the city to pick up.
I agree with you on grass clippings, I've owned my home for 7 years and have never bagged any clippings (and I have one of the nicest looking lawns in the area).
The nice thing about my town is that we have a separate dump/landfill for organic material. Any resident can take stuff there for free. The city will also collect leaves in November and branches throughout the year. They mulch it all up and take it to the dump. Local nurseries and lawnscaping businesses then pay the city for access to the compost/mulch that is created.
Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely they do have that right for any action that has a negative impact on others. Primarily physical impact (you aren't allowed to punch me in the nose, nor poison me, nor walk into my house and take my stuff, nor forcefully have your way with my daughter, nor have my dog for supper, nor dump your garbage in my front yard), but to some extent, mental (you aren't allowed to threaten to burn my house down).
The nice thing, though, is that people aren't allowed to do this to you either. And I don't care how big you are, there's someone bigger out there who would do these things.
Civilization is a set of laws, most of which boil down to, "Don't steal". Don't steal life, wealth, innocence, health, well being. And when industry and individuals pollute and despoil, you're stealing my health and physical well being.
No, but... (Score:3)
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.
Nice idea, wrong implementation (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
You'd be surprised how much you can reduce waste.. (Score:4, Informative)
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!
People don't understand composting (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
No, a landfill is an anaerobic environment. Organic material in a landfill barely decays at all once it has been covered and sealed.
Re: (Score:3)
Where does the methane come from, then?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
No, i am right. It "barely decays" like I said, but it does not compost(verb). To compost, it would have to transform into a rich and productive organic soil. It does not.
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeh, but you are taking up space in scarce landfill with material that could be used, rather than ... taking up space in Landfill. Where I am in London, we are supplied with 3 bins, compostables (which takes pretty much any organic matter apart from raw meat and bones), recyclable - almost all plastics, all metal and glass and regular rubbish. The compost created is sold to gardeners, used for public parks and gardens etc. and does a lot more good than it would causing a stink in landfill.
Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
That is a powerful incentive, but some people are retarded. Here you pay extra for excess trash; naturally a neighbor threw away 30 cans one day of usable clothes, pots, pans, and other such things. Those could have been donated to charity; instead, the wealth they represented was destroyed. She was charged for this--she should have been charged more. Destruction is not profit.
It is good for society to have a trash collection service. It is also good for society to avoid the destruction of wealth. If you destroy wealth in society, then it is well and proper that society take some of your wealth in recompense. Compostable material is valuable--and if the value of the product outweighs the economic cost of the labor, then indeed we have created new jobs (wealth) rather than a waste of labor. As with all recycling, however, there is a base cost plus a per unit cost. The per unit cost is less than the value of the product per unit; however you need a certain volume to overcome the base cost. That is why you should be charged for excess trash to encourage recycling and composting: to force you to pay the difference, either by recycling and composting (giving your trash to convert to wealth) or by money (giving your wealth directly).
Society is made more wealthy by these activities, but only if society participates. Non-participation means the economic costs are never recovered; because you are taking the means of recovery and destroying them (no trash output means no trash; high trash output means likely the average distribution of waste, some of which is reclaimable), you are both subverting a method of increasing societal wealth and costing society via inefficiency in its attempts to increase societal wealth. You are thus responsible for your actions, as they harm society. Pay up, either in aluminum or in gold.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:But... (Score:4)
The 9% of Americans who are unemployed, for starters.
Re:Why is municipal composting better than landfil (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
Re:Why is municipal composting better than landfil (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Garbage heap (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:The old broken window fallacy... (Score:5, Informative)
Its not a broken window fallacy if its actual useful work that can be done and adds value to society.
Re:The old broken window fallacy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily.
In the first place, labor is required to make all the things needed to produce food, and to produce food, and ship food, and prepare food. Compostable waste is then thrown away (destroyed).
Now, by collecting this waste, composting it, and reusing it as a nutrient source, some of the labor required to make the things to produce food (notably the food and feed fertilizers) is replaced by labor to reprocess waste food. This is simply collecting and stockpiling trash, mainly (and adding water, occasionally turning, very simple stuff). The raw materials that made the original fertilizers are still in this compost--the cost of mining, of processing, of purifying, and all associated labor--and thus a large amount of labor (and raw material) is saved. Further arguments can be made for capture and burning of released hydrocarbons (methane) in the process as a power source.
Thus, soil nutrients being required, and less labor being required to obtain these nutrients, the cost of growing food is reduced. Thus more food can be grown, or other stock for biofuel, and thus more labor can be employed for that purpose, and the industries supported by it (trickle down economics). Thus as well the cost of food itself should be reduced (speculation and complacency affect this, and food costs may not run down in our system; they should, but...), leaving more money in the hands of individuals to support other industries, thus supporting new labor and more jobs (trickle up economics).
Thus we have avoided destruction, and created profit.
Re:The old broken window fallacy... (Score:4, Informative)
"What's more, this industry generates additional jobs.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy [wikipedia.org]
Decades ago there was concern in Michigan regarding the recycling of two litre bottles, what would they do with this recovered plastic? Oh, the taxpayer would suffer an immense burden with having to recover and figure out how to recycle, reuse, whatever, a mountain of plastic. Then some clever engineer found this plastic could inexpensively be used to produce polyester fibres and offered to take all the bottles off the recovery agency's hands - no charge. A nice arrangement, right? Well, another company decided they wanted the plastic too, so a small bidding war broke out for these bottles - which ultimately went to the original source of the material - pre-bottle, driving up the market price of the PET raw material.
Who would have foreseen it, eh?
Re: (Score:3)
The "resonsibility" is towards your garbage.
Re:Question about the greenhouse gases (Score:4, Informative)