Can a city make composting compulsory?
Home » Blog » Kate Taylor & Ray Fort » Can a city make composting compulsory?San Francisco has the most aggressive recycling and composting law in the US. Will it work?
As we mentioned in our last post, there is a lot of innovative green thinking happening in the San Francisco area. And it’s not limited to web 2.0 startups. Politicians here aren’t afraid to try new things either, and their legislation often serves as a model for other cities, and nations.
But while it doesn’t take long to know if business ideas are successful, public policy is not as easily evaluated and the results of much of San Francisco’s most notable legislation are still unclear.
Most recently, in July San Francisco passed what’s being called the most aggressive mandatory recycling and composting law in the country. While the city has offered residents recycling and composting (yes, composting!) services alongside trash for years, making the services mandatory is what promises to help the city reach its goal of sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.
There are questions about how the law will be enforced, as citizens fear ‘garbage police’ going through their trash and citing them for a stray can that has settled in the garbage bin. This controversy has led to the city assuring its residents that it won’t actually enforce these provisions, calling the effectiveness of the programme into question.
In 2006, San Francisco banned the use of polystyrene food containers for takeaways, instead requiring that eateries use “biodegradable/compostable, or recyclable disposable food service.” No longer do workers carry white Styrofoam containers full of burgers and ethnic food through the streets of the financial district at lunchtime. Now that mandatory composting is here, one can hope that these new containers won’t end up in the same landfill their Styrofoam predecessors did.
In 2007, San Francisco banned grocery stores and chain pharmacies from giving customers disposable plastic bags, becoming the first city in the country to do so. (China followed suit a year later.) A tax on the bags was considered, as was a voluntary reduction in the use of bags by grocery stores but neither was expected to reduce the visual impact and environmental issues that these bags cause as they drift around the windy streets. Certainly the law has been effective in reducing the amount of plastic bags, but unfortunately many shoppers have simply switched to paper bags, which are easier to compost or recycle but use far more energy in production. Many small businesses still hand out the plastic bags, as the law only applies to large chain stores, which also reduces its effectiveness.
Less controversial legislation includes bans on mercury thermometers and limits on wood-burning fireplaces.
The city has also developed strategic initiatives to influence activity across city departments and increase the quality of life of all residents. In 1996, the city adopted the Sustainability Plan, establishing sustainable development as a fundamental goal of municipal public policy. In 2002, the city passed the Climate Action Plan, committing the city to a greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal of 20% below 1990 levels by 2012. The resolution also voiced support for the Kyoto Protocol and called on the Federal Government to ratify it. The Sustainable Foods Initiative works to increase the amount of fresh, local and organic food available to City residents and departments and the Urban Forestry Plan recognises the value of trees in the city and sets goals for increasing the number and health of the valuable city asset. The mayor has promised a carbon neutral city government as part of his agenda for the city.
San Francisco’s politicians can’t be accused of sitting idly by and doing nothing about climate change. While the effectiveness and reasonableness of ideas incubated within the city’s political arena is sometimes in question, there’s no question that the city’s leadership believes that we must act and it’s this attitude that makes the government here as innovative as the private sector has shown to be.
Sun November 01, 2009 @ 11:39 AM
