Sorting through the trash

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome is proposing fining residents up to $1000 for failing to sort their waste into the appropriate receptacles, and in extreme cases of anti-recycling deviance, garbage pickup might be stopped. Presumably, you won't be able to claim a rebate on your property tax bill, nor carry your rations home in anything other than cloth bags.

The proposal, which city officials said the mayor could bring to the Board of Supervisors in about a month, calls for every residence and business in the city to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash.

Food vendors would have to supply them for customers. Managers of multifamily or commercial properties would be required to provide them for tenants or employees.

Trash collectors would be required to check the bins for proper sorting, which [Environment Department Director Jared] Blumenfeld said would require only a cursory visual inspection, not combing through the contents.

If they found a bin with the wrong material in it, collectors would leave a tag on the container identifying the problem. A second time would result in another tag and a written notice to the service subscriber.

On a third offense, the collector could refuse to empty the container, although this would not apply to multifamily properties like apartment buildings or to commercial properties with multiple tenants and joint collection.

The city could also levy a fine of up to $500 for the first violation, $750 for the second in one year and $1,000 for the third in a year.

[..] "We don't want to fine people," the mayor said. "We want to change behavior."

And what better way to change behaviour than by threatening to take your money? This guy cares even more than Fenris, though his methods are not as effective.

Think of the jobs that will be created for bureaucrats and union workers in this sinister Kafkaesque ordering of the city. A fleet of newly hired garbage inspectors with a background in security will accompany the garbage collectors on their route, more office workers will be employed to process fines and pleas to have garbage pickup reinstated, and through that broken window the masses will continue to feed because taxpayer money is worshiped as ever abundant.

cp: The London Fog