San Francisco Composting & New Mandatory Requirements
1. The opinion piece.
2. The city government site with specific text. Mandatory waste sorting into recycling, composting, and landfilling, reflecting state and local landfill-diverting and climate targets, with enforcement tools.
3. The city government awareness campaign (featuring several of my friends!)
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To the view that this is a violation of civic freedoms, I don't think so.
I believe the city's new policy is reflective of the long tradition of government's role in securing a public good. In much the way that I do not have the right (and can incur a fine) to speed in a school zone, park in front of a fire hydrant, allow weeds from my private property to grow into a sidewalk, or play music so noisy as to disrupt the sleep of my neighbors - so it is for properly recycling and composting to serve a broader public good that benefits me too.
I'm much more focused on the practical aspects of making this policy succeed. The hardest part has already been achieved: setting up the infrastructure, the contracts, the collection schedules, the buyers, to make the recycling and composting a reality. Now, for this goal of 100% compliance, the practical challenges are:
A. Perpetual Education: like any decently-sized city, there's a steady flux of residents, tourists, and day-trippers...many of them are not habituated to local conditions at their start. How SF deals with its wastes is certainly different from all the other immediately adjacent counties.
B. Materials Raiders: both homeless (especially out-of-town newbies) and organized recycle thieves may leave a missorted mess in their wake, which could conceivably become an unjust penalty to the home- or business-owner. This issue may be addressed in the new law, but I haven't reviewed it yet.
2. The city government site with specific text. Mandatory waste sorting into recycling, composting, and landfilling, reflecting state and local landfill-diverting and climate targets, with enforcement tools.
3. The city government awareness campaign (featuring several of my friends!)
===
To the view that this is a violation of civic freedoms, I don't think so.
I believe the city's new policy is reflective of the long tradition of government's role in securing a public good. In much the way that I do not have the right (and can incur a fine) to speed in a school zone, park in front of a fire hydrant, allow weeds from my private property to grow into a sidewalk, or play music so noisy as to disrupt the sleep of my neighbors - so it is for properly recycling and composting to serve a broader public good that benefits me too.
I'm much more focused on the practical aspects of making this policy succeed. The hardest part has already been achieved: setting up the infrastructure, the contracts, the collection schedules, the buyers, to make the recycling and composting a reality. Now, for this goal of 100% compliance, the practical challenges are:
A. Perpetual Education: like any decently-sized city, there's a steady flux of residents, tourists, and day-trippers...many of them are not habituated to local conditions at their start. How SF deals with its wastes is certainly different from all the other immediately adjacent counties.
B. Materials Raiders: both homeless (especially out-of-town newbies) and organized recycle thieves may leave a missorted mess in their wake, which could conceivably become an unjust penalty to the home- or business-owner. This issue may be addressed in the new law, but I haven't reviewed it yet.