holy crap. new york seperates metal, glass, paper, and plastic. wish my city did this.
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Composting
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Can we have this here in British Columbia too?
I'm not sure how this is going to work, except for single-family homes. Apartment buildings with hundreds of units are common, and some of the residents inevitably won't compost. It's relatively inconvenient in a large building where residents didn't have to go outside to throw anything out before. (A lot more inconvenient than recycling, which is usually placed into a bin by the compactor chute.) Is the city just going to fine each building $25 every time an inspector checks? That would be like a new tax, but a low one by NYC standards. Or is the fine going to be larger? Then it would still be a tax, just a higher one, because individual tenants have almost no financial incentive to avoid triggering it.
In my building, to take out the compost you would have to get dressed, take the elevator to the basement, go outside, enter in the code to get into the fenced area with the compost bins, throw your waste into the bin, buzz the front desk so that they open the basement door for you, take the elevator back upstairs (which also requires buzzing the front desk unless you own your unit), and get undressed. That's on top of having to keep garbage in your freezer. On the other hand, just throwing away the organic waste costs you nothing (because someone else won't so the building will be fined anyway) and in the unlikely case where you're the only one who breaks the rule, your share of the fine will be one eight-hundredth.
Edit: I'm not making a value judgement. (I wouldn't come to a composting sub-lemmy and talk about how composting is bad - that would be rude.) I'm just talking about how the law will (or won't) work in practice.
Is the city just going to fine each building $25 every time an inspector checks?
From the city's website, it looks like a fine of $300 can be assessed for buildings with more than 9 units (and for multiple infractions).
I assume this would incentivize owners to inform their tenants of the policy, and make composting more easily accessible to them. I can think of a dozen loopholes and unforeseen consequences of this law, but however imperfect, I still believe it's a step in the right direction. Food waste is a massive issue, as is nutrient loss from our soils, and ultimately I think that inconvenience is a small price to pay for addressing that. I realize that not everyone feels the same way, which is why incentives are needed.
This law is a negative incentive, so I would hope that some positive incentives could be implemented as well.
Anybody else misread the title by moving the hyphen over to the left by one?
As in thought they were talking about composting people? Yes. Yes I did.
They are doing that in some places, but is generally something you have to fight to be allowed to do rather than compulsory.
No