San Francisco, CA > News > Green your Home
S.F. mayor proposes fines for unsorted trash
by Adam W.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/08/01/MN47122A98.DTL
Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents' trash to make sure pizza crusts aren't mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom
If the new program goes into force, residents or businesses that don't separate the coffee grounds from the newspapers would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped.
The plan to require proper sorting of refuse would be the nation's first mandatory recycling and composting law. It would direct garbage collectors to inspect the trash to make sure it is put into the right blue, black or green bin, according to a draft of the legislation prepared by the city's Department of the Environment.
The program is designed to limit the amount of food and foliage that goes into the city-contracted landfill in Alameda County, where the refuse takes up costly space and decomposes to form methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. It will also help San Francisco, which city officials say currently diverts 70 percent of its waste from landfills, achieve a goal set by the Board of Supervisors to divert 75 percent by 2010 and have zero waste by 2020.
"If we're truly going to be the city we promote ourselves to be, a world-class, 21st century city that advances its values and principles, we're going to have to try new things," Newsom said Thursday. "People are used to doing things a certain way. And when you change that, they say it can't be done. Well, we've proved them wrong."
He pointed to a doubling in the city's recycling rate from 1996 to 2008, but acknowledged "it will take some time" to win over hearts and minds...
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Earth to Newsom
This is one of those great ideas that I really, really, really hope goes nowhere.
The world does not need garbage police. Recycling - Yes. Garbage police - No.
If the recyclable cardboard box contains pizza when it arrives in the house, then sooner or later, somewhere across the city or the state or the nation, it's going to leave that way too. Ditto the coffee grounds and the newspapers - they're going to get mixed. We're talking about trash, there's a limit to the amount of care people are going to devote to keeping it clean.
Enter the newly empowered garbage collectors and the levy of that first fine. Think about it. Is the recipient going to be 1) shocked and chagrined at their earth-risking lapse and determined to be more careful or 2) outraged at the idea that Big Brother has invaded even the garbage can?
My vote is for option 2. I'm also tempted to think that, while economics might restore the motivation to recycle, the impulse towards other forms of planet-friendly living just might disappear.
Bin it, mayor.
Ed's keywords: recycling
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