I’m not going to wade through it either - just saying there might be something in there that property owners to compost their own trash.
But I just thought of something - - I bet that unecessary business about the property of the county ended up in there because of laws/court decisions in some places that recyclable material put out for collection is the property of the trash collecting entity. For example, if I have a bag of cans/bottles on my property , they are still mine and someone can come onto my property and take the ones with a cash deposit with my permission. If I have put it on the public sidewalk near the curb for collection, they technically could be ticketed for taking them because they are city property at that point. The reason is that the city gets some revenue from the recycling - it only applies to recyclables, not to furniture or small appliances I’m disposing of. I’ve never heard of it being enforced , but I suppose it might if someone was filling a few truckloads every night.
The bureaucratic solution is to call what’s being composted materials rather than waste. Unless the regulations also state that the county owns all compostable materials . . .
They use a very broad definition of “solid waste”:
“Solid Waste” means sludge unregulated under the federal Clean Water Act or Clean Air Act, sludge from a waste treatment works, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility, or garbage, rubbish, refuse, special waste, or other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained gaseous material resulting from domestic, industrial, commercial, mining, agricultural, or governmental operations. Recovered materials are not Solid Waste.
That’s the whole issue here- the quote implies that if you put your carrot peelings in your compost pile that you’re somehow violating the law because the instant you separate that peel from the carrot, it becomes the property of Palm Beach’s solid waste people.
Which is absurd. There has to be some sort of legal bulk demarcation between it being considered something of yours that you have control over, and something of theirs. I would suspect the act of putting it in the receptacle/putting it on the curb is that act. Anything before that, and it’s still yours. Anything after, and it’s theirs.
The article’s misleading- this vermicomposting lady was effectively running her own trash business by going around collecting that compost from businesses. That’s what I think the county objected to, not the idea that she was vermicomposting in the first place, or that it wasn’t her trash. And they probably only objected because they already had a use for that sort of trash- burning it for power generation.
But if the business chose to give it to her, rather than put it out in the trash, what’s the violation?
If i give away an old piece of furniture, list it online, and ask the person who wants it to come to my house and pick it up, would i be violating the law because the county could burn that table? Would the guy who took my table be violating the law? It all seems very strange.
You can also practice vermicomposting in your backyard, even if you live in Palm Beach County.
and that link takes you to this which has a post from someone who claims to be the person whose business was shut down, It’s clear from that post that the problems are related to it being a business and it even says
Backyard composting of your own waste generated on your own property is legal in Palm Beach County. It is when you bring your waste somewhere else like to your neighbors or a community garden where it becomes illegal.