The city council passed legislation yesterday that expands Seattle's mandatory recycling program (it's current illegal to toss recyclable waste in your trash can, whether you live in a single-family house or an apartment) to require all residents to put food waste and compostable paper products in special compost bins instead of tossing them in the trash. For single-family homeowners, violating the rules could mean a fee of $1 per can, per collection. 

According to the legislation, "as of January 1, 2015, all residents living in single- family structures, multifamily structures and mixed-use buildings shall separate food waste and compostable paper for recycling, and no food waste or compostable paper shall be deposited in a garbage container or drop box or disposed as garbage." (Editorializing here, but if you're capable of tossing the garbage in a garbage bin, you're probably capable of dropping your apple cores in an adjacent container.)

It's in the multifamily world that the rules get more complicated. The new rules, like Seattle's mandatory recycling law, apply to renters, but it's up to landlords to provide compost containers big enough to accommodate all their tenants. If they don't, they could be subject to a fee of $50 per collection.

SPU solid waste division director Timothy Croll says tenants themselves are "under obligation to put compotasbles in the compost bins; however, there is not a direct way that they would have a consequence [because] we don’t know who put what the Dumpster." Landlords can, of course, always increase what they charge tenants for trash collection if SPU starts slapping them with extra fees. 

All violaters will get repeated warnings before SPU cracks down. Staff for council utility committee chair Sally Bagshaw note that the legislation includes a six-month grace period, during which violaters will receive written notices but no fines; after June of 2015, they'll get two more notices before they're fined for breaking the mandatory composting law.

The legislation also allows landlords to ask for an exemption if they don't have enough space for a composting bin, but they have to get explicit permission from SPD to skirt the rules. "We would have to be convinced that there's a space problem," Croll says.

What if tenants clutter their compost bin with non-compostable trash like plastic bags and beer cans? Croll says SPU can't penalize landlords or tenants for trashing up their compost bins, but would consider taking the compost bin away temporarily or providing more educational posters for the landlord to display on their property.

According to Bagshaw staff, since the council adopted a ban on throwing away recyclables in 2005, the city has issued roughly two dozen citations for violating recycling rules.