Photo credit: EcoWatch.

This couldn’t have gotten better for those who have been trying to decentralise waste management in Bengaluru and championing composting as the best way to recycle wet waste in the city faced with unprecedented landfill crisis. At least now they can draw support from the US—so far known for its highest per capita garbage generation—for its fantastic composting mandates in many cities and push their cause forward saying, “Yes, we can!”

San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and New York have passed ordinances making composting mandatory and have banned landfilling of food waste. Those who refuse to fall in line will be shamed into submission first with a red tag on their garbage bins and then fined heavily. That includes businesses, single family homes, apartments and everyone else. No excuses whatsoever.

According to Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle sends “approximately 100,000 tons of food waste 300 miles to a landfill in Eastern Oregon each year, resulting in higher costs and greenhouse gas emissions.” It expects the law to “divert 38,000 tons of food scraps from the landfill via composting, thus helping the city achieve its goal of recycling and composting 60 percent of its waste by 2015.”

Well, here’s yet another reason for us to ape the West. But this time, for a better reason.

For more details on how these progressive American cities are trying to implement their composting mandates, please click here.