City Imposes Fine on Residents Who Throw Away Food

The Seattle City Council has imposed a mandatory composting ordinance, requiring all residents to separate their biodegradable trash from other kinds of refuse.

The city has no plans to hire dumpster-diving cops to inspect the trash, but they’re expecting garbage collection companies to enforce the rules.

According to the Seattle Times, “collectors can take a cursory look each time they dump trash into a garbage truck. If they see compostable items make up 10 percent or more of the trash, they’ll enter the violation into a computer system their trucks already carry, and will leave a ticket on the garbage bin that says to expect a $1 fine on the next garbage bill.”

“The point isn’t to raise revenue,” Tim Croll, director of solid waste for the Seattle Public Utility agency, told the Times. “We care more about reminding people to separate their materials.”

Under the ordinance, apartment complexes and offices would be fined $50 for each violation, meaning some apartment-dwellers will now have to keep their decomposing leftovers somewhere in their homes, alongside trash and mandatory recycling bins.

Seattle hopes the new rule will boost residents’ recycling. The city has a goal of recycling 60 percent of refuse by 2015.

The new rules regarding composting come only months after the City Council announced that Seattle Public Utilities would have to raise trash-collection rates by 5 percent.

Read more on Watchdog.org.