If You Won't Obey, You Just Need a Behavioral Change

We've written before how the recycling racket is uneconomic to consumers, businesses, and the recyclers themselves.

We have previously noted how Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter tried to comply but finds the recycling regime to be "heavy-handed, coercive, distant and thick with detailed rules."

Composting (green bin) is different in SF than in my town.
(Examiner photo)

Now we discover that the residents of San Francisco, the Vatican of the green religion, are recycling less than half of what should be put in the green and blue bins. According to Debbie Raphael, director of the City's Department of the Environment, [bold added]

a survey by the department showed people knew why they should recycle and how, but didn’t do it because “it’s too much trouble, it’s just too much work.”

“Here, we have a system with the ultimate convenience. Everybody’s got the bins. We have signs to show you. We have outreach campaigns. And they still don’t want to do it because it is still not convenient enough” Raphael said. “Whatever that culture of convenience is here, we’re up against it in a big way.”

The deplorable people are stubborn as mules. They do not think it's convenient to unwrap stale hamburger and throw the slimy meat into a maggot-filled green bin, the plastic film into the black cart, and spend a minute washing their hands with hot water and anti-bacterial soap. Yes, I'm speaking from experience.

Because mere encouragement hasn't worked, the next step in the Progressive playbook is to force them to obey:

Supervisor Hillary Ronen suggested The City ramp up enforcement. “It just seems like we should have been in the enforcement compliance phase a while ago,” Ronen said. “It’s pretty outrageous that 60 percent of what’s going to the landfill is still recycling and compost in San Francisco in 2018 after all of the work that both Recology and the Department of the Environment has been doing and I think it’s time to step it up.”

She added, “We just need a behavioral change.”

Bring out the cattle prods.