On Thursday, July 16, the California-based Libertarian public interest group Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit against the City of Seattle for invasion of privacy on behalf of eight volunteer plaintiffs.
The city passed the ordinance last September in an effort to “divert 38,000 tons of food scraps from the landfill via composting” and reach its recycling and composting goal of 60 percent by 2015, according to the SPU website. Residential and commercial customers whose garbage contained more than 10 percent of prohibited items would be fined, starting Jan. 1, 2016.
In the meantime, garbage collectors visually determine whether how much “real” garbage there is and issue brightly colored tags to remind violators of the law — hence, the rub.
The invasion of privacy argument can be debated since trash is placed on a public street with no expectation of privacy. And garbage collectors are instructed to not open garbage bags but to visually inspect the items that are loose, coming out of bags or in transparent containers, according to The Seattle Times.
Still, there is no known systemic means to determine what that 10 percent looks like in a mixed bag of trash, so the ordinance can’t be equitably enforced. And, as the lawsuit also contends, there is no means through which SPU customers could appeal their fines.
The fine for not properly separating your garbage — which was to originally start July 1 — was suspended on Earth Day last April because the city found that 71 percent of SPU customers were aware of the ordinance. If the city was willing to postpone the fines within the first quarter, then it should throw out this ordinance altogether. The city’s education campaign has clearly done enough to achieve the same goals without the disposable piece of legislation.