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
Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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: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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:1, Insightful)
I myself sort all my recycling, compost in my back yard, built a rain barrel and xerescaped my yard.
i do this because it interests me, no one should to order me to do it.
no one else should have to just because someone else thinks its a "green" thing to do.
save the commie bullshit for some other country.
Cannot believe the negative comments (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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: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.
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: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: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: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: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.
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 mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:5, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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: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: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: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: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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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.
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, 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, 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: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:Oh good grief. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? (Score:3, 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.
Correct. However, I suspect many people here, myself included, don't want X to be provided as a tax-supported service, for almost all values of X.
Most services (not all) can be paid for by user fees, not government taxes. User fees allocate cost to those who benefit from a service, while general taxes (like income taxes) are designed to be uniformly unfair in this regard. Some services, such as ensuring preservation of civil liberties and civil rights, and ensuring that all vendors are provided a free market, may require taxation to implement. But these are very specialized and noble services, not mundane services such as trash collection.
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: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.
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.
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."
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, 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: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, 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:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should X be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 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?