All a person needs is a disposal and send it down the drain

California doesn't have enough water to use the disposal

I would have voted STUPID if it were a choice!

We are going broke in this state and they want us to worry about apple cores and bits of corn left on a plate. Amazing !

bzb wrote:

If they went even further and helped people do away with lawns and start gardening it would be even better!

Has it ever occurred to you that not everyone finds such a task as prospectively enjoyable as you apparently find it? In this case, what you call "help" is called in the minds of *normal* observers "arbitrary legislation." I wonder if what you have in mind for it would take into account that some people don't even live with a lawn. Under your little view of "utopia," are they just stuck with the fines until they get themselves a teeny little organic farm like good, little, environmentally-friendly drones?

If your idea of progress is to fine people because they don't want to turn their properties into a million little farms and spend all their time working them, then there's a thumping good read with which I'd suggest you acquaint yourself. It's by George Orwell; I'm sure you've heard of it. Your concept of "better" is nothing more than such an old (and failed) policy under a new name.

Composting produces the same methane gas. How is this really different? Let's 'keep the biodegradable materials out of the landfill'. Are you kidding me? Haven't we been trying for years to have only biodegradable materials in the landfills?

Not all food waste is compostable. Only vegetable matter should go in a compost bin, pile, whatever. The non vegetable matter attracts vermin. What would be next, separating organic and non organic food scraps? If I'm an organic farmer, I don't want someone's non organic, pesticide laden compost on my crops.

It's a good concept, but like most legislation, it wasn't thought through very well. Why not just offer the people a compost bin and they have the option of putting scraps in it, or not?

It is, in fact, a great idea. So is working out and losing weight, keeping a positive outlook, etc.... But forcing people to do is is NOT a great idea. I hope you can understand the difference between "great idea" and "pay the fine or go to jail" for this. If you give your government this kind of authority then you run the risk of some serious oppression when, somewhere down the road, the government starts mis-using that authority.

If you want to seperate your trash, be my guest. To force someone else to do this is completely un-American.

some people have manual labor jobs, often two jobs to support their children, some families have a single parent, I suppose these people should be "helped" to spend their little free time gardening. That is much more important than time spent helping their children do homework, or paying bills.

What if you didn't love gardening, lets turn it around, perhaps I love building model cars, and scientist claim that building model cars will help save the earth, perhaps you should be helped to give up all that time you waste gardening so that you can spend your hours building model cars? If you don't help build cars everyday for several hours, you will be fined $100 per week of non-compliance.

Get use to it Shari...because there WILL come a day when you'll be glad that you know how to raise your own food! As for spending time with your kids, if you taught them to garden as well, then they would also learn to be self sufficient ecause someday they WILL need to do this. Keep sticking your head in the sand and watch your children grow and die when people have to fight for food because there is no electricity, and stores are looted. If you think the next generation will not experience that, you are kidding yourself. Look at California! So many people, every summer brown outs, running out of electricity because of overuse! Greed! Neon lights, Pool filters, air conditioners, cell phones, TV's, video games, washers, dryers... ALL electricity mongers en masse! And what happens when the electricity goes out Shari? Where does your food come from then??? People somehow survived before all those aforementioned "THINGS"...AND they grew their own food!...and amazingly, they had kids and bills too...many were single parent families because the men got killed or the woman died in childbirth... BUT they survived.

Jewel Stone wrote:

Neon lights, Pool filters, air conditioners, cell phones, TV's, video games, washers, dryers... ALL electricity mongers en masse! And what happens when the electricity goes out Shari? Where does your food come from then???

OoOoOoOoOo.... Spooky, spooky, doomsayer. Are you a hypocrite like what you accuse others of being, or will you practice what you preach by turning off your computer?

People somehow survived before all those aforementioned "THINGS"...AND they grew their own food!...and amazingly, they had kids and bills too...many were single parent families because the men got killed or the woman died in childbirth... BUT they survived.

The family members who died didn't; wasn't that the point of mentioning them?

Today, many such deaths are avoided, thanks to this gluttonous fascination with electricity we seem to have. Put your money where your mouth is and cut your power lines; don't rely on anything electrical. The next time there's a medical emergency concerning *your* family, see how well you do without the manufacturing process that created the treatment for it, the diagnostic equipment that helps a doctor determine *which* treatment is necessary, the ambulance that gets to that doctor, or the phone that lets you call for that ambulance in the first place.

On the other hand, you could also just shrug your shoulders and do without those things, rationalizing that at least your *family* will go on, will "survive" - after they've gotten a gas-fueled, electrically-driven backhoe to dig open the cemetary plot.

What you advocate, Jewel Stone, is a return to an aggrarian society. There's a reason that civilizations tend to advance beyond them, however, and it has nothing to do with electricity: When the efficiency in food production advances to the point that one household's farming efforts can feed *more* than just his own family, that leaves other individuals to pursue other tasks - that is, to specialize - without risking starvation (since he can use his living from his specialized task to purchase food rather than grow it). In Europe and Asia, this happened centuries - millenia, even, in some areas - *before* the discovery and harness of electricity. Fuel-generated electrical power is just an extension of a human behavior that began long before, so even if you're right about the swiftness of the approaching doomsday regarding electrical power (which I believe to be *highly* questionable), you are still wrong about it heralding a return to an aggrarian culture in which everyone must grow his own food.

I'd be happy to bring all my garbage over to you and then you can compost your little herat oout.

I for one do not want it

Are you Stupid do you all really want to go back to the Dark ages, or are you just that brain washed and goofy?

in many suburbia neighborhoods, the only green we get to see is the lawns. that tiny stamp of nature helps me continue in this land of cement.

you and your nazi followers want to rip that away from a homeowner that has worked her whole life to have a small house with a small lawn? Go eat some mushrooms you filthy hippy.

Having the government so involved in my life that I will get fines for this is way too big brother for me.

I do not need my life controlled to that extent.

Jimmy Carter tried that once in Florida.....

I live in the eaqst coast and I resent your comment! You think the only 'normal' place in the US is the midwest?? Fortunately, I live on the east coast in a quite normal place and life is good...and we compost, hunt, grow out own vegetabls and fruits and are pretty self sufficient. So stuff it commonsensedude

gingerine wrote:

If it works in old Europe why not in the US?

America is not like Europe. It is a land of extremes; the pendulum keeps swinging until it goes too far, then it swings the other way until it has gone too far *that* way, and so on, and so on.

You can read some of the comments above yours as easily as I have. The proponents of this legislation don't think it goes far enough: The next step in their idea of progress is to eliminate the step of sending the compost to the recycling center - to mandate the use of private, household lawns for "organic" farming (as if the term "organic" means anything; *all* farming is organic - that's the point of it). I wonder if you could find an example of legislation in a European community that picks up on that particular path of "logic."

Please don't give them any "Bright" ideas. SF should become its own country. It has so many nuts in it that want to tell you how to live it is just funny.

Well SoCalGal.. most of California is a bunch of nuts. And how many people in the US won't have much sympathy when it breaks off from the rest of the country because of the earthquakes? Hell there are so many people ...er nuts there, that it's surprising it hasn't sunk into the ocean! LOL ON a serious note...you guys are doomed anyway, so enjoy!!!

Robin Burns wrote:

My grocery bags lead a double life-such an ordinance would be wasteful and expensive.

That's an excellent point, although it's apparently a completely separate piece of San Fransisco legislation. You aren't alone in this practice; in fact, the people I know who take plastic grocery bagging the most often, specifically to re-use them in such fashion, are environmentalists who separate recyclable waste diligently for their county. I, too, see such legislation as counter-productive, even for its stated goal of environmental protection.

Amen brother. But unfortunately this freedom is no longer taught in our schools and in our homes. People are forgetting.

AMEN Taijiguy!!! I'll take the RIGHT coast any day of the week! Any hopefully when California does end up having the BIG ONE, they stay the hell OUT of my state! ecause they will just bring their crap with them!

The ignorance of people these days, both public official and private citizen, is just mind-blowing. The worst thing is that common-sense individuals like you and I have no way of reversing the downward spiral.