Mandatory Composting

I was just reading on MSNBC.com that San Francisco is mandating composting. While I can applaud their reasoning for this, making use of the compost collected for area farms and vineyards, it's the inevitable fines that will go into effect in 2010 that I don't like.

The city's residents will now have to have 3 separate bins: 1 for trash, 1 for recycling, and now one for compost. I'm sure it will also be at the residents' expense to purchase said bins. While they claim they won't be picking through trash to find who is not composting, the idea is that the trash collectors will just take notice of what they are dumping in the truck and if they find food scraps they will leave a note on the home. Eventually this will lead to a $100 fine starting in 2010.

This is all fine and good, but I don't think fining people is the right thing to do. Not considering the waste of government officials especially. Educating them through mailers and public service announcements on TV makes sense, especially since the goal of this is to eliminate landfill waste by 2020. Get the people used to it, neighbor will talk to neighbor and in time all will automatically be doing their part to make their city, state, country cleaner. But mandating via legislation? That's just bullying and forcing.

Then there are people who live in apartments. I'm sure the building will have the appropriate bins for the right use, but if you've ever lived in an apartment you will realize just how little space a renter has (and that includes condo owners because condos are nothing more than apartments that turned condo). So now apartment dwellers will have to have yet another bag/can in their already crowded kitchen for food scraps and then haul all this down to the garbage/recycling area of the building. If you live in a 5-story or less building, that means hauling it all down the stairs, not an elevator.

So on one hand I applaud San Francisco for it's efforts to cut landfills, but I don't care for their forcing residents to comply by fining them. Force is never a good idea and legislating something and threatening fines is no less forcing them than holding a gun to their heads.