DORI MONSON

Seattle government will have agents looking through your trash

Sep 23, 2014, 1:06 PM | Updated: 2:56 pm

Your garbage is about to get a closer look. The Seattle City Council passed an ordinance to fine pe...

Your garbage is about to get a closer look. The Seattle City Council passed an ordinance to fine people whose trash is composed of more than 10 percent food waste. (MyNorthwest.com/Riley Elliott)

(MyNorthwest.com/Riley Elliott)

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

The government is going to start looking through your garbage in Seattle. This is really exciting news. I want government workers looking through my trash and I’m sure you do, too.

The Seattle City Council has announced that if you put too much food waste in your garbage, you could be fined. If more than 10 percent of your trash is food waste, you’re going to be ticketed. You could be fined every single week when they pick up your garbage.

But how in the world can they guesstimate the percentage of food waste? They’d have to have a scale and pick out all the food waste and put it on a scale and then weigh all your garbage in total.

You know what I’m going to do out of spite? I’m going to put in precisely 9.5 percent food waste in my garbage every week. I’ll document it and if they try to fine me for that, I’m going to take them to court.

No. I don’t actually think my family puts much food in the trash because my wife is pretty good at separating out the recycle and the garbage and the food waste.

But I just think it is so insane, the notion of government employees going through our trash. They will reportedly take a look at your trash as they dump the bins, and if they see over 10 percent is food waste, they will leave a ticket on your can.

But I don’t know how they’re going to do this. Doesn’t everybody put their garbage in trash bags? Are they going to hold the white trash bags up into the sun?

Seattle City Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw is assuring the public that they’re not just doing this to collect fines.

“I want to assure you that SPU is not in the fining and collection business, that over the years they have actually collected less than $1,000 total for the recycling fines that they have issued since 2005.”

She says this is really going to help the environment:

“We anticipate that this will actually reduce 38,000 tons going away, that we can put it into our local compost facilities.”

So for the environment, the garbage man will be looking in your garbage bags. This is government at it’s very finest.

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

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