I grew up in Seattle.  I will never live there again.

The city's attorney said, "Containers are only tagged if the contamination is clearly visible."  Recyclable material is "contamination".  People in Seattle are environmental zealots.  Based on conversations with my brother who still lives there (and is just as liberal as this city attorney) I am certain that the vast majority of residents there have long ago abandoned any faith in God and have adopted environmental paganism as their religion.

These people will lose their lawsuit.  I doubt it will even go to trial.

As the veteran radio newscaster Paul Harvey would say, "Now for the rest of the story."

I live 285 miles east of Seattle in Pullman, WA and I'm using local numbers but I would think those would be similar to Seattle's.

In the pacific northwest almost all garbage is hauled (truck and / or rail) to either Repubiic Services landfill in Roosevelt, WA or Waste Management Inc.'s landfill in Arlington, OR.  Pullman uses Republic Services, our waste is trucked 80 miles north to Spokane, WA and then loaded on rail cars for the trip to Roosevelt.  Seattle contracts with Waste Management for waste (garbage, recycling, compost) pickup so I'm assuming their garbage goes to Arlington, OR.

Let's do some arithmetic ...

It costs Whitman County (where Pullman is located) $130 per ton to send garbage to the landfill in Roosevelt (I'm assuming Seattle's costs are about the same as the distance from town to landfill is about the same).  Two years ago Pullman started single stream curbside recycling (like Seattle has).  We don't yet have compost pickup but it can be taken to the transfer station.

The recycling market is a bit soft right now and the current value of co-mingled recycling is $7.05 per ton.  The county has a cost of $59.00 per ton for processing and shipping the co-mingles recyclables; 59.00 minus 7.05 = a net cost of $51.95.

I don't claim to be really smart about business things or accounting, but if I had a business that had a pile of material I didn't need and it needed to moved off the property and I had two choices for how to get it moved: One choice would cost me $130.00 per ton and the other choice would cost me $51.95 per ton, I'm thinking that EVEN I could figure this one out.

When Pullman went to "single stream curbside recycling" (previously most items needed to be taken to the recycling center) recycling GREATLY INCREASED (I've seen the numbers but can't put my finger on them at the moment).  The county is looking at ways to do more local sorting to increase the value of some recyclables.  I was surprised to learn that a ton of plastic gallon milk jugs is worth $470 and a ton of aluminum is worth $1,400.

The way I look at it is when a municipality provides a real simple system for a household to dispose of their waste (three well marked containers for garbage, co-mingled recyclables, compost) and there are people who are TOO LAZY to use even this simple system, those people are taking money out of my pocket, as ultimately my garbage rates will increase because of the added cost of garbage needing to go to a landfill versus the cost recyclables and compostables going in another direction.