Seattle has made it illegal to dispose of food and food waste in the garbage, as of Jan. 1. It won’t be enforced until July 1, presumably to give residents more time to learn what’s compostable and recyclable and what’s not. Then residential and commercial customers will be fined if their trash has more than 10 percent food waste or recycling.
Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) hopes to “divert 38,000 tons of food from the landfill via composting,” according to its website, to help the city achieve its goal of redirecting 60 percent of its waste to recycling and composting this year. While the amount of trash diverted from the landfill had increased steadily since 2003, it leveled off at 56.2 percent in 2013.
Requiring customers to recycle and compost more would certainly cut down on the amount of trash being shipped to a landfill in Eastern Oregon, and subscribers would save money on their solid-waste bill. The fewer landfills needed in the future, of course, would be better for the environment overall.
While most Seattleites are quite familiar now with what goes into the recycling bin, many don’t know the finer details of composting, even though it’s been required of customers since 2005. But the sorting of food and food waste can be complicated. Food scraps are easily identifiable. More difficult: Uncoated paper plates and greasy pizza boxes go into the food- and yard-waste bin, but dirty, coated paper cups and plates go into the trash — clean, coated paper cups and plates, however, are recyclable.
If only sorting items into recycling, composting and trash were as easy as reading a nutritional label. Party hosts, you’ve been warned.