After forcing New Yorkers to spend billions of dollars for the privilege of sorting their garbage into recycling bins, municipal officials have found an even costlier—and grubbier—way for residents to spend their time in the kitchen. They must now separate food waste into compost bins or face new fines imposed by the city’s garbage police, who will be digging through trash looking for verboten coffee grounds and onion peels.
Composting is the most nonsensical form of municipal recycling: it delivers little, if any, environmental benefit at the highest cost. In addition to wasting people’s time, it attracts rats to compost facilities, puts more fuel-burning trucks on the road, and diverts tax dollars from what was once a core priority of the Department of Sanitation—keeping the streets clean. Whatever its appeal to suburbanites with yards and gardens, composting is absurdly impractical in a city—especially one facing a massive budget deficit.
Where are New York apartment dwellers supposed to find space in their tiny kitchens for yet another waste bin? It’s bad enough that elderly residents must schlep their newspapers and bottles to basement recycling bins instead of simply using the trash chute—now they’re expected to haul bags of rotting food, too. (New Yorkers have long been denied another convenient option, garbage disposals, because the city’s onerous plumbing regulations have prevented most buildings from installing them in kitchen sinks.) Under the new rules, landlords are on the hook: fines of up to $300 will be imposed if their buildings don’t comply with composting requirements. But how are they and the superintendents of large buildings supposed to enforce the law? Unlike the city’s inspectors, they never signed up to be trash detectives, much less dumpster divers…