The argument for using the garbage chute for organic waste disposal

I previously blogged that when organic waste collection comes to highrise buildings, the buildings without tri-sorters should use their garbage chutes for organic waste, and have people bring recyclables and landfill waste to the garbage room or the dumpsters. However, this idea doesn't seem to have caught on. I keep reading about allegedly innovative and forward-thinking buildings trumpeting the fact that there's an organics collection bin in the garbage room or out back, as though this is at all pleasant or convenient or going to result in optimal resident behaviour.

So here once again, broken down into simple concepts, is the argument for using the garbage chute for organics.

1. Organics are the most virtuous of all waste. Organic waste comes from healthy, wholesome foods. The better you eat, the more organics you have. Produce results in organic waste. Packaged, processed foods result in regular landfill waste. If logistical realities require disposal options of differing levels of convenience, the more virtuous eating habits should be rewarded with the more convenient disposal method.

2. Disposing of organics is more urgent. We've all had days when we're cold or sick or busy and don't want to go all the way down to the garbage room or outside to the dumpsters. If you leave your organics sitting around in your apartment, they'll attract bugs. If you leave your landfill waste sitting around your apartment, it won't. And bugs will not only affect the apartment where the organic waste is left sitting around, but also the neighbouring apartments. It should be as effortless as possible to properly dispose of the waste that is most likely to attract bugs.

3. The organics bin is the grossest. If any of the bins in the garbage room or dumpsters behind the building are going to smell or have bugs or be oozing mysterious gunk, it's going to be the organics bin. As I mentioned above, putting stuff in the organics bin is the most virtuous method of disposing of the most virtuous category of waste. All this virtue should be rewarded by letting people do it from as far away from the grossness as possible, not by making them touch the gross bin.

4. Organics are best disposed of at night. Most organic waste comes from food preparation, most of which tends to happen at dinner time. People are most likely to want to dispose of it before they go to bed, so it doesn't sit around stinking up the place and attracting creepy-crawlies at night. However, garbage rooms and dumpsters behind buildings are scarier after dark, because nefarious creatures of the two-legged and the six-legged variety are more likely to be skulking about then. The importance of and the unpleasantness of disposing of organics at night is disproportionate when compared with the time-sensitivity of the disposal of other types of waste. People will feel much safer if they can take care of this chore in their own well-light hallway.

5. Some people are going to throw the organics down the chute anyway. Because of the anonymity of garbage chutes, some people are going to throw stuff down the chute just because they don't feel like going out of their way to dispose of it properly. As mentioned above, organics are most urgent to dispose of than other types of waste, the organics bin is the grossest of all the bins, and organics are both best disposed of at night and most unpleasant to dispose of at night. It therefore stands to reason that organics is the category of waste most likely to be thrown down the chute improperly. Why not turn this improper behaviour into optimal behaviour simply by redesignating the purpose of the garbage chute?