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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Because it's more likely to actually happen that way.

I've tried composting, and don't have the patience for it. Lots of folks live in apartments or places with HOAs that forbid it.

There's also the benefit that industrial composting can process things like dairy and meat safely that can't be home-composted.

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If you don't have patience to dump organic waste in a one spot outside of your house, how do you plan on doing the same with the waste bin provided by your city? Yes, I understand that this will not be possible everywhere, but let's just start doing this where possible, before we look for expensive and complex solutions to simple problems.

This is a ridiculous view of composting. Even if you assume everyone's organic waste is appropriate for a no-worm no-turn pile (hint: it isn't), it still won't work in the winter in most of the world, lots of people simply don't have the space, and everything will be fucked up the first time a raccoon finds your pile.

Doesn't a heap need tending to in some way?

I'm happy to put my food waste in a little box and have the government come round with a truck once per week, at the very least its rotting somewhere miles away from me.

I don't think i have the space or knowledge to do it myself

I'm not sure where you are located, but in Philadelphia there is a service, you sign up and they give you a bucket to put out for collection once a week. https://www.bennettcompost.com/weekly-composting

I'm in the UK.

No signing up here, you just put the correct boxes out on the correct day and some chap picks it up.

Its slightly frustrating having six different bins and having to keep a schedule pinned to the fridge but it kinda works.

Honestly I just bury compostables and let the natural processes happen. This takes very little work. Not so easy to do in an apartment though.

That doesn't work well and it creates a lot of excess methane.

See: How current landfills work

It’s in a few inches of soil. I assume soil organisms, insects, and earthworms will take care of it.

Our city collects organic matter to compost. I have a garden and I don't compost myself because 1) I wouldn't want to compost things that would attract animals, and 2) composting takes up space, and takes forever.

It's really not that hard to fill up the compost bin and then put it out with the trash and recycling every week. Municipal composting is great IMO.

I would never trust compost from a municipal source. Too much chance for random toxic waste to get introduced by unscrupulous dumpers.

What I'd like is an automatic waste sorter. Throw everything into one bin, put sort the glass one way, paper another, all X plastics in their places, metals, compostables...

We have made progress in that for recycling, but there are two trucks that come by my house.

> Throw everything into one bin, put sort the glass one way, paper another, all X plastics in their places, metals, compostables...

Cardboard, at the very least, would generally be immediately ruined and rendered non-recylcable doing this.

Cardboard itself is only barely recyclable in the first place. My understanding of the recycling process for paper is that basically you're required to go a grade down in the process, and cardboard itself is basically the end of that process.

I suspect you'd environmentally gain more from improved recovery of more useful materials from single-stream waste than you'd lose from no longer recycling cardboard products. (Especially since a large amount of dedicated cardboard recycling is itself going to be spoiled by the inclusion of greasy pizza boxes in that stream).

Corrugated cardboard recycling is pretty big because of the volume of material used in manufacturing and commerce.

There are facilities that sort the entire stream, partly because diverting material away from the landfill saves cost there.

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