Brickbat: One More Thing to Do

A new California law requires households and businesses to separate food and kitchen scraps and other "green" waste from the rest of their trash so it can be composted. Officials say the goal is to reduce waste going into landfills and to cut the methane produced when kitchen waste decomposes. Each city and county will implement its own specific requirements over the next two years.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Use a commode and bag all fecal matter for composting. Repeat daily, weekly, monthly. Have trucks deliver it to elected officials. Rejoice.
Hey that's a bunch of shit!
Piss off!
Gʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴊᴏʙ ғᴏʀ sᴛᴜᴅᴇɴᴛs, sᴛᴀʏ-ᴀᴛ-ʜᴏᴍᴇ ᴍᴏᴍs ᴏʀ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ɴᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴀɴ ᴇxᴛʀᴀ ɪɴᴄᴏᴍᴇ... Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴀ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴜᴛᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ ʀᴇʟɪᴀʙʟᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇʀɴᴇᴛ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ... Mᴀᴋᴇ $90 ʜᴏᴜʀʟʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴜᴘ ᴛᴏ $12920 ᴀ ᴍᴏɴᴛʜ ʙʏ ғᴏʟʟᴏᴡɪɴɢ ʟɪɴᴋS CASHAPP NOW ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ᴀɴᴅ sɪɢɴɪɴɢ ᴜᴘ... Yᴏᴜ D ᴄᴀɴ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪs ᴡᴇᴇᴋ,go to tech tab for work detail,..........
Try it, you won’t regret it........CASHAPP NOW
Piss on...The Pisser.
I have received dfy exactly $20845 last month from this and home job. Join now this job and start making extra cash online nam by follow instruction
on the given website........... Visit Here
Half measures. Outlaw table scraps completely.
Don't worry this 'temporary' inflation will take care it.
After all, there are children starving in Africa. How finishing my plate is supposed to help them I don't know, but that's what I always heard.
Outlaw food. Agriculture is unsustainable.
If they had any brains, they’d just reclaim fuel from garbage and use it to help power the electric grid.
Oh no, wait. It’s California. They’re incapable of being smart.
https://energynews.us/2013/10/17/is-burning-garbage-green-in-sweden-theres-little-debate/
If it's not wind or solar they won't even consider it.
The problem is trash is a very bad fuel. It's got a lot of water, a low heat content, a lot of metal, and an inconsistent amount of toxic and non-toxic contaminants. What you get is very low amount of heat and a relatively high amount of pollution, even after the best control devices.
Now, if you want to reduce landfill usage, it's a good solution, and recovering energy is better than nothing, but it's not going to be providing much on a societal scale.
So, perfect for green worriers.
The article does say they recycle half, burn 49% and only 1% gets to the landfill. They also scrub the exhaust for pollutants. Not sure how much it all costs but the fuel is nominally free. It might be better to run it through a biodigester and collect the methane for fuel.
e
When it fits the narrative it's a "climate event," and anyone who makes the above weather comparison is a dumbass who ignores science.......www.now37.com
I'm going to invent a toilet paper dispenser that dispenses one square at a time and I'll get rich as hell once California issues the mandate.
People will bootleg and sell rolls on the streets and end up dying by cop because of you. Racist!
Brother, can you spare a square...
Until they mandate that those dispensers must be made by a minority owned business (or other approved group). You know for the environment.
Well, "attack helicopter" is definitely a minority.
Please stop giving our Asswipes in Sacramento ideas!
"Each city and county will implement its own specific requirements over the next two years."
Whoa, full-employment laws for lawyers, environmental consultants, accountants (for counting your rotted foods), Karens for snitching, and other assorted bureaucrats! After this, they will have specifically crafted rules and enforcers (plus hangers-on) for each household! THIS will stimulate the economy big-time!
You mean everyone in California isn't already composting their food scraps?
I can see the kids, educated in Progressive schools, turning in their parents to the Green Police for putting an apple core down the disposal instead of in the overflowing, stinky, compost bin.
People with lawns and gardens have been composting since forever. My redneck hometown in California has had lawn trimming bins for decades now, but a lot of people still just compost their trimmings. It's no big deal.
But it IS a big deal if you're urban in an apartment or condo. Now your compostables are primarily eggshells and carrot peelings. Now I can't just garbage dispose them? I have to separate them out into a special receptacle? Fuck that.
Yes, rotting vegetable matter produces methane. And it's a problem for waste disposal sites. But it's NOT a climate change issue. Methane at that scale doesn't come from kitchens and gardens.
And if recycling industry is any guide, these new composting centers will probably just secret dump the compost into the main waste.
I can definitely see Cali banning vegetable peelers in the not so distant future on the grounds they generate too much compost.
How does Cali currently handle used coffee grounds? Are they considered toxic waste given the whole Prop 65 coffee kerfuffle?
My recycling doesn’t get picked up in weeks with a 3 day weekend. I complained. The town said “your recycling should be cleaned, so it won’t smell or attract vermin.”
I said “If I’m cleaning the recycling, to keep the bin for an extra week, are you going to give me a discount on my water usage?”
No, they said.
I said “Then I’ll just throw it away in the garbage.”
But we need you to recycle, so the town can make money off the sale, the town said.
“So share the profit. Pay me to wash my recyclables,” I said.
We can’t do that, they said.
So I hung up and tossed the recycling in the garbage bag.
No way I’m keeping smelly stuff around for two weeks just to virtue signal.
So... not sending it to the landfill prevents it from decomposing and offgassing methane?
That struck me as well. Normally, you can smell the off-gassing from *much smaller* sources composting from *much further* away than you can smell the of-gassing from landfill. It couldn't be more absurd, or reliant on the public's ignorance/apathy, if they just blatantly said that composting is better than landfill at converting it to unicorn farts.
Not just ignoring the common misconception that landfills are designed to decompose garbage, but relying on it and then adding the misconception that composting, which does decompose garbage, somehow does it with lower emissions.
It's anaerobic versus aerobic decomposition.
I believe some landfills capture methane. Whereas composting just releases the gases during the bioconversion. Disclosure: I compost about 95% of food and non-junk mail paper waste.
Actually, methane is a byproduct of anaerobic decomposition.
So, when you bury something deep and compact it, like in a landfill, and no oxygen can get there, the bacteria that eat it shit out methane. In a smaller compost heap much more is consumed by aerobic processes.
but... this isn't about that. It's a law to make people do a performative act so the green nazis can feel good about themselves. Like "recycling" which, locally, meant cubing it up and sending it to China until China stopped taking it and now means taking it to the landfill in a different truck. But we still have to have a separate bin or we're evil!
We’ve been doing this (we’ve been FORCED to) in Shiticon for some time now—the whole state finally caught up to “our” guiding light example. You can barely fit a garbage bag into the part designated for such—that other part? HA’ How many eggshells, orange rinds and small bones can a household “produce?” And those Green Nazis to whom you refer are all too often the affluent gentrified class who love feel good “sacrifices” which don’t really impact their ilk nearly as much. Never mind I be that the very gentrification they so benefited from is linked to an unprecedented (for this area) homeless problem—their left wing fascist minds can’t play “connect the dot” like that. Sudoku and frozen yogurt on University Avenue for them!
Actually? Lol.
In case anyone missed this Penn & Teller B******t episode, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ztdlb
I will totally lobby my city council to attach air horns to the recycling trucks.