So supposedly the planet's falling apart at our very feet. I believe that, for the most part. That we humans have trashed our environment- be it through pollution, over development, or over exploitation of natural resources- is undeniable. Sure it's been happening for a while, but it's been only recently that people at large have become aware of the problems and are now willing to do something about them. If the environment is really at a crisis point, do these desperate times call for desperate measures? I came across an article today that made me examine this question.
The city of San Francisco has just passed an ordinance that makes composting mandatory. And when I say mandatory, I don't mean "UN resolution mandatory," I mean "do this or we will punish you mandatory." Residents of the city by the bay will be fined if their trash collectors find scraps of food in their garbage.
To me, this clearly belongs in the "going too far" column. One supervisor called the new measure another "progressive" law in a "progressive" city. It seems this person got a little mixed up over the definition of progressive, because forcing anybody to do anything is not progressive, it's oppressive. These laws, while their intent is laudable, are nothing less than draconian.
Honestly, how disturbing is it that garbage collectors are now, in a sense, law enforcement officers? They are allowed to rummage through your trash with the explicit mission of finding evidence with which to fine private citizens. I know that in many municipalities, trash that is on the curb is actually considered public property, so legally, San Fran's new law changes nothing about that. But, there is a difference between knowing that strangers will occasionally pick through your trash and knowing that your garbage collectors will, on a weekly basis, search your trash for signs of newly- and absurdly-defined "criminal activity," for which you will be punished.
One supervisor defends the new law as being no different from recycling programs. The fines are merely supposed to (forcibly) encourage citizens to make a habit out of separating regular garbage from compostable material, mostly food scraps. Many Americans today don't think twice about recycling cans and plastic, even though doing such a thing would have seemed strange thirty years ago. I suppose that the city of San Francisco wants to accomplish the same thing with composting. But why is it necessary to do it with threats?
Recycling caught on not because government forced Americans to adopt it. It became popular for two main reasons: firstly, there was a "noble cause" behind it. Recycling made people feel like they were doing something good (which they were), so there was little need to force people to adopt the practice. Secondly, and more importantly, there was a profit to be found in recycling. When you place your paper, aluminum, and plastic on the curbside, you are providing a company, contracted by your local government, with the raw materials to manufacture their product for free. It's a great arrangement, since us citizens get rid of our trash, reduce waste and environmental exploitation, and someone makes a couple bucks in the process. Can we do something similar with composting?
Well, there is certainly a "noble cause" behind composting; in fact, it's really just the same cause behind the idea of recycling. So there should be no problem getting people to put effort into composting. The only obstacle, really, is that no infrastructure exists to compost millions of people's food waste. Some people, mostly suburbanites and country folk, can compost right in their back yard. But we live in an urban nation, and most people do not have the space to compost on their own. For that, they would need their food waste to be picked up right along with their garbage and recycling.
It seems reasonable that local governments would have to organize compost collection, but there is no reason to force people to. Most Americans would gladly compost. And there is definitely money to be made in composting. I see an excellent opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur to offer to collect food waste at the curb, process it into compost (a process which requires little more than some open space), and sell it to gardening companies or local farmers. It's a wonderful arrangement, just like recycling, and yet the city of San Francisco decided to muck everything up.
Overall, laws like San Francisco’s new composting ordinance make me angry as a freedom-loving, quasi-anarchist Republican-Libertarian nut job. It represents an unacceptable government intrusion into our lives. The people of SF's Board of Supervisors didn't think very hard about a solution to the composting problem, and it seems they just defaulted to the "we'll coerce people into doing it" option. And ultimately, I'm not sure if they will accomplish their goal. As David Henry Thoreau said, true change does not come about from our government (take that all you Obama-nites), it comes from the general populace. And once the people at large decide they want to start composting on a large scale, which I am confident they will, things will fall into place, just as it did decades ago for recycling.
It's important to protect the environment, but there is a good way and a bad way of going about pretty much anything. And San Fran unnecessarily chose the bad way in this case.
Overall, I have to agree that it is not good policy for the government to come in and try to influence many aspects of our everyday lives. A government should be a means only to organize what we as individuals do not have the means to do so. However, Americans are lazy. It has taken us this long to see the problems that we are causing in this world, and there is still a large percent of the population that believe that global warming is a lie made up by liberal politicians to yield more seats in Congress and the Oval Office.
Sometimes you need to nudge a people in the right direction for a greater good. In your blog, you spoke of garbage men as "law enforcement officers" who would be looking to bust people for not composting. I think that we both know that this isn't true. No garbage man wants to go through all of your disgusting waste trying to find an apple core. It is a reminder to the people that they should compost their waste and that there is no reason not to.
With the exception of large corporations with a lot of un-recycled waste, there hasn't been any suburban or inner city busts on those who don't recycle. Instead, what happens is that grassroots campaigns will see that a problem has risen up and inform the populace about the problems with their actions. (i.e. http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/07/03/science/earth/1194841319741/pa...). No police officer has busted into these projects in the name of recycling. Instead, it is the people who make the change. I assume that the compost law will yield a system similar to this.
And even if it is going to be heavily enforced, good for the government of San Francisco. Sure, a couple pounds of food waste from a household that is thrown out every week instead of being added to a compost pile won't make a whole lot of difference. But overall, the change could be massive. Better soil in an urban city, more space in landfills, etc. I don't feel that there is a reason to be upset with a law like this.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/nharris1032
Long time no see. Good to see you back in the blogosphere.
I don't deny that the government is a useful tool to organize projects, I just become uncomfortable when coercion is involved. Of course, it remains to be seen whether garbage collectors will help enforce the law, or if the law will be actively enforced at all. Most important to me, I feel that SF missed a huge opportunity to have private businesses collect and process the compost- and any such company would gladly fund public awareness campaigns encouraging citizens to compost. California needs to watch its pennies (on the other hand, maybe SF enacted the law for the purpose of generating revenue- those composting fines would nicely cushion city coffers). The law seems to me largely unnecessary, too broad reaching, and an abuse of city power.