Get outta my kitchen!

Mayor Sam Adams and the City of Portland are currently working on a plan that could make food composting mandatory. It seems that once again Portland is out to impose liberal values on an individual level.

The plan, which will be undergoing a test phase for around 2,000 Portland homes this spring, would have people digging through their garbage to pick out food scraps to be used as compost. The city plans to pay for what they hope will become weekly compost pickups by scaling back regular trash pickup to every other week—this may also be a subtle way of encouraging compliance.

There is no doubt that recycling efforts and reducing the amount of garbage that hits our landfills is a worthy goal. Unfortunately, these new policies come awfully close to crossing the line from encouragement to coercion.

What this is doing is forcing individuals to change their habits at home for values that they may not even share. Linda Knight, the city’s solid waste coordinator, compares this new green practice to regular old curbside recycling in a recent Oregonian article, and that people will get used to it. The difference here is the nature of how it is implemented.

Placing a redeemable tax on bottles and cans does not force compliance—one can choose to simply give away their nickel and not recycle that beer can. This new plan comes right into one’s home and forces them to change the way that they live and what they do with their food. This plan forces people to conform to an ideal by taking away other options.

This isn’t to say the goals of this plan are bad—of course recycling is a good thing. The problem here is that the means are not a fair way of achieving the ends. People should be recycling because they want to, because they believe in it, or even just to get their nickel back. They should not be forced into recycling, especially when it involves something so personal.

Reducing the amount dropped into dumps with respect to food scraps could be solved by giving houses garbage disposals, i.e., by giving people the option to dispose of their waste in a more effective way. This option also happens to be more convenient for people and would therefore get people who wouldn’t normally do so to recycle of their own free will.

If you want to recycle, go right ahead—I know I do. What I don’t do is try to make other people recycle because I think they should, or go into their homes and make them do it.

If Adams is so hell-bent on enacting this plan, I say he starts this little project in his own neighborhood—I say let Knight dig through her garbage for food scraps. And they probably would because they want to, because they think it’s the right thing to do, and that’s just fine.

Regardless of whether or not it is the right thing to do, imposing that practice on others by using civil authority is certainly not what we should be doing.