They're from the government, and they're here to help:

'Friendly' San Diego city officials are set to send teams of inspectors to dig through people's trash cans looking for recycling violations.

Nicely, of course.

Image: Screen shot from City of San Diego video, via NextDoor

They plan to issue 'oops' citations to scofflaws who throw the wrong stuff in the wrong trash bins.

In San Diego, we put trash in one of three bins -- generic trash (black can), recycle trash (blue can), and organic trash such as food scraps and lawn clippings (green bin.)

Here's the city's official video on NextDoor, where micro-news of neighborhoods is reported:

Oh, it's not because they want to go through our trash, they say.

Ostensibly, it's a safety concern -- some people are throwing batteries into the bins and some of the trucks are blowing up, which does sound like a serious problem, if true.

Do they do inspections after they find a battery or before? How could they stop a trash-truck fire unless it's pre-emptive, making every resident a suspect?

The video didn't say.

But is digging through every trash can the answer? What if they find other stuff they disapprove of? What if they would like to tell a neighbor of his affair with the other neighbor's wife, too? What if city officials would really like to go through a political opponent's trash under the pretext of searching for battery scofflaws?

We should just trust them, you see.

And in a blue city that's already bankrupt, are they really going to be able to do that effectively in a city of 1.4 million? How can they be sure they'll get the right violator?

Aren't there better ways to trace violations than mass inspections of cans?  Cameras? 

How will they prove who did what? 

I do scrupulously sort my trash, but I have been dismayed to see that when I put it on the curb, some people, probably the renters across the street, put their often-tied plastic-bag trash full of banana peels into my green organic can. If I see it, I have to take the fruit picker to the interior of the bin to extract the plastic bag. But if I miss it and the inspectors don't, who gets the 'oops' ticket? 

And back to the battery issue, what will they do about repeat violators? Will they stay friendly and continue to issue 'oops' tickets?

And what of the recent reports that most of the blue-can recyle and green organic trash ends up in the same landfill as the unsorted trash? Why are they bothering given the city's limited funds?

It just seems incredibly invasive and impractical.

For what it's worth, city officials never mean what they say when they promise benign little changes.

These days they're also plotting sneaky new ways to raise taxes following their recent tax-hiking spree, which now includes garbage collection fees:

Now they assure us that the new wave of trash inspectors are our friends and we can all rest easy.

Color me skeptical -- this kind of stinks.

Image: City of San Diego video, via NextDoor