Ok, how do you keep people from dumping their garbage in someone else's garbage bin, or in some public place in the middle of the night?
This also doesn't really deal with the fact that different garbage has very different effects on the environment and society, and very different mass. "E-waste" frequently doesn't weigh that much, but has a lot of both valuable metals and also hazardous materials which can cause problems when dumped in a landfill. Mercury-bearing batteries are especially bad, but those don't weigh much at all. Some broken dishes, however, can easily weigh far more than old electronic gadgets or leaky batteries, but they're just pottery so they're completely inert and have zero negative environmental effects. And yard waste and kitchen waste isn't environmentally problematic at all, yet it can weigh a lot because much of it is water. It'd be better to compost it, but urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile.
I live in Zürich. Here, you can only throw things away if they're in the proper bags, which cost about two francs for a 35 litre bag.
But taking stuff to the recycling centre is free, and there's usually one within five minutes walk of any given house.
The end result is that waste is basically self managed --- people are incentivised to recycle as much as possible and reduce waste. I remember hearing that disposal largely pays for itself, but I don't have a reference for that, so don't quote me.
Many municipals in the US have similar policies with garbage, either pay for the special bags or pay per bin. Even at a small cost this often leads to dumping. I saw someone had dumped their trash in a cemetery. :(
My dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local government (In America) has managed to pick up my curbside trash once a week, for years.
Over the past year and a half, it's also managed to pick up my curbside compost. It's also managed to provide both electricity, and running water.
Most of America isn't some kind of lawless hellscape, filled with wandering ghouls, cursed with a hunger for human flesh (Despite what Randian fiction seems to claim.) Mandatory infrastructure tends to work, for some definition of working. (Now, if only the same could be said about Comcast...)
>Most of America isn't some kind of lawless hellscape, filled with wandering ghouls, cursed with a hunger for human flesh (Despite what Randian fiction seems to claim.) Mandatory infrastructure tends to work, for some definition of working. (Now, if only the same could be said about Comcast...)
About half of it is. Visit the South sometime and you'll see. A lot of places still don't have recycling, much less compost pickup.
And as for mandatory infrastructure, the entire United States fails here: internet access is mandatory infrastructure in this day and age, just like running water was considered mandatory by the mid-20th century, and the US's internet infrastructure is pathetic (as you admit about Comcast).
Most of those places in the South don't have recycling precisely because they are too busy complaining about how terrible and inefficient and wasteful their government is, and how taxes and fines harm their freedom to throw whatever they want to in the garbage. To uncharitably generalize a bit.
There's that, and the belief that environmentalism is a communist plot, and that aluminum grows on trees.
If they wanted compost pickup, there'd be no reason why they couldn't have it. When you've solved curb-side garbage pickup, you've also solved curb-side recycling pickup, and curb-side compost pickup.
San Francisco sends its (mandatory) curbside compost up to Napa to grow our wine, and having lived through a couple ballot initiatives and largely-self-infliciated absurdly high rents here, I can think of no municipality that is more dysfunctional or incompetent.
Ok, how do you keep people from dumping their garbage in someone else's garbage bin, or in some public place in the middle of the night?
This also doesn't really deal with the fact that different garbage has very different effects on the environment and society, and very different mass. "E-waste" frequently doesn't weigh that much, but has a lot of both valuable metals and also hazardous materials which can cause problems when dumped in a landfill. Mercury-bearing batteries are especially bad, but those don't weigh much at all. Some broken dishes, however, can easily weigh far more than old electronic gadgets or leaky batteries, but they're just pottery so they're completely inert and have zero negative environmental effects. And yard waste and kitchen waste isn't environmentally problematic at all, yet it can weigh a lot because much of it is water. It'd be better to compost it, but urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile.