There’s a new law in town, telling San Franciscans what to do with their compost – a law for which there is hardly any enforcement.
Last June, the Board of Supervisors in a 9-2 vote, approved Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal for the country’s first mandatory composting and recycling law, which the city hopes will decrease greenhouse gas emissions and divert refuse from landfills in the coming years, according to Joanne Wong, residential zero waste associate with the Department of the Environment.
Beginning Oct. 21, all homes and businesses within San Francisco must have three separate bins for refuse: Black for trash, blue for recycling, and a new green bin for composting.
Failing to properly separate trash will result in several warnings, ultimately leading to potential fines of $1,000 in egregious cases, according to the environment department.
This really makes me think about the paper bag in my kitchen full of coffee grounds and partially eaten pizza – if it wasn’t there would I really have to pay a hefty price for it? Wong says otherwise.
Individual tenants will not be fined and only property managers and business owners will have to answer to the city’s monetary consequences for not composting their organic refuse, she said.
“If the fines don’t affect me, then I don’t care,” Zack Tell, an environmental studies major at SF State said. “I’d be willing to compost, but I won’t be willing to be fined for not doing it.”
The 21-year-old said if his landlord is responsible for non-composting fines, then they should incorporate a clause in the lease requiring him to compost, but until that happens, he feels noncommittal in adhering to the new ordinance.
I’m not so sure that everyone will follow his example, but I’m certainly going to continue to throw my food scraps in the compost regardless of the law’s ambiguity.
To even further their laxity of the law, the city currently has a hold on fining anyone until July 2011 in order to get people used to the change, according to the environment department.
Also, the new ordinance does not allocate any money for new trash inspectors to keep an eye on who’s composting and who isn’t, according to the department.
However, there have been green-friendly people fighting for an initiative such as this one for years.
“He’s making the right decision to fine people,” Emily Naud, the student center sustainable initiatives coordinator at SF State said of Mayor Newsom’s proposal. “People won’t do it on their own.”
I do it on my own and so do a lot of other people in this city. Creating an illegitimate punishment for people who don’t compost might deter them even more, ultimately making this new recycling law counterintuitive.
Wong hopes the new composting ordinance will cut about two-thirds of the roughly 600,000 tons of waste the city sends to landfills annually.
“People are still affected by [not composting], but they don’t realize that they are,” Naud said of the attitude many have towards not caring about composting if the fines don’t directly affect them.
A poll on http://sfgate.com displays that 42 percent of voters believe the composting law is too “Big Brother” for San Francisco, while 33 percent believe it will be one more law that won’t be enforced.
“I see how people can think it’s Big Brother-ish, but Americans produce so much waste.” Naud said. “I don’t feel sorry for anyone about it.”
San Franciscans are notorious for their love of boasting their progressive lifestyles, but living up to one’s own convictions is another matter entirely. It’s somewhat ironic that the city has adopted a law, which requires people to be environmentally savvy, yet hold off on their enforcement.
If 33 percent of poll voters assume this will be one more law not enforced, perhaps the law will get the attention it needs – people raising eyebrows toward the city, and others questioning what they put into their trashcan. Either way, people will think about the situation, whether or not they’re forced.
Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
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