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In August, I read a article in, Parade, about paying for your trash. Paying for the disposal of trash varies. Some cities charge per bag, can, sticker or it is included in city taxes. To be honest, I don’t pay (directly) for my trash disposal. My husband takes our trash to our company dumpster. I pay indirectly but I’ve never actually considered reducing my waste because I will be billed more. I probably would be very careful about what I put into the garbage, if that was the case. Which makes me believe, maybe it should be for everyone. It would encourage more recycling, reusing and hopefully composting or less waste and consumption, period. This does not mean I’m frivolousness but we do fill our trash can regularly and I’ve never really kept track. Some weeks its more then others and we always recycle. Regardless, I’d pay closer attention, wouldn’t you?
To play devils advocate, I wonder with the economy being so tough if this would lead to trash dumping along roads and highways? I wonder if people would be able to pay their trash bill when some people might not be able to afford their heat this winter. I think of my close friend who runs a childcare center, I’m sure she couldn’t reduce her waste too much and thus she’d be billed extra. She’s always using more than one can with a bag or two extra sitting next to the curb. How would this impact her? If private residents are billed, would businesses also be impacted?
I think it’s a great topic for discussion. There’s no doubt that if you make garbage you should pay for it. How much and what is the limit, that’s the debate. EnviroMom has a neat ongoing challenge for families to reduce their garbage waste to one can per month. If weekly you put a garbage can out for pick-up, reduce this to once per month with the same can. Can you imagine what would happen if every family did this? We would be reducing our landfill waste dramatically, increasing the recycling and reusing and hopefully reducing the junk we buy. A challenge I need to consider and actively take part in, how about you?
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A good movie that discusses this issue is Garbage Revolution. There they have a local family keep their garbage for three months. It is a real eye opener.
WIth a background in economics, a pay-as-you-go system is ideal as long as people cannot cheat (dumping it on the side). I think its a great idea, like carbon offsetting, but is always a struggle to implement.
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” wonder with the economy being so tough if this would lead to trash dumping along roads and highways?”
The problem (in my area) is already bad enough and I can only see it getting worse.
In terms of paying for your trash, I’m not sure I fully understand. We pay monthly for our “sanitation” services. Basically paying for the garbage men to pick up our trash. We pay more if if we have more than one can. Its seem to have always been the case. Is that what we’re talking about?
I pay about $80 every 3 months for trash pick-up once a week and sing;e strea, recycling pick-up every other week. Here in DE, most trash collection is private so it’s a “pay for the services you use” situation. Personally, it would probably be better for us if recyclables were picked up weekly and trash bi-weekly but so far, that’s not an option. There are still a lot of people though who don’t pay for the recycling (most of my neighbors).
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@Carla, yes but in some areas you have to pay per bag or like your area, more for another trash can.
@Corey, I’ll have to check out that movie. I think with our economy, people would cheat.
I have always lived where we had to pay for garbage except when we lived on a farm and then we burned our garbage and if we couldn’t safely burn it we didn’t buy it.
In AZ I payed about $50 for sewer and garbage and got to fill a big can two times a week.
In Ohio we pay a private service and they charge $10 a week for up to 4 cans of garbage a week. Pretty cheap.
We take our own recycle stuff every week to the plant…it is free to drop off.
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I live in a small suburb of Phoenix, AZ. Currently, we do not have a recycling program. They took a survey to see if residents would be willing to pay $5 a month for recycle pick up, in addition to garbage. Our monthly garbage pick up fee is around $15 (two pick ups a week). We didn’t hear anything for almost a year. I contacted the city to see what had become of the grand plan and was informed that not enough residents were willing to pay the $5 extra. I was shocked. I know the economy is rough, but just $5 more a month? So I took it upon myself to get bins, sort my recycle and haul it to another suburb that actually does recycle and offers a free public drop off location. I emailed a link to the city with a similar article about paying for how much trash you pick up. Who knows. But I do know that before we started recycling, we were putting out a full garbage can for both pick up days each week. Now, we sometimes can go two weeks before we bring it out, and that’s often only due to the smell factor. Its amazing how much garbage two people can generate, but even more amazing how that drops when you learn how much of it is actually recycleable!! I think programs like this would really help open up other peoples eyes to what they throw out,what could be recycled. The trick is to find a way to do it that people will view as fair (example, home based businesses could maybe be given a discount on additional bins, etc,or based on number of people in the household, etc), and be cost effective.
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I think most people pay for their trash service, but the way they do it varies by city or even neighborhood. I know some have to pay EXTRA for recycling, which is not mandatory. Then the trash service allows unlimited trash for a low dollar amount. Obviously, then, people in this situation are not motivated to recycle or reduce their trash.
In Portland we pay for the amount of service we want, so I pay less because we need just once a month pick-up. We can still recycle weekly. We collect anywhere from 10-32 gallons of trash a month. (The trash can is 32 gallons, and sometimes we do fill the whole thing. Other months we have just one small trash bag.)
It seems like a really bad idea to have it just included in your taxes. That makes it seem like trash service is “free” and people probably throw out as much as they want.
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In our township (as well as most surrounding areas) we pay a private service to pick up our waste. And the price depends on the size of the container required w/ extra charges if you put out more. Although most of the time if it’s just one bag they don’t care. For that reason though, I do pay attention, but normally only to larger items.
Our township has just started a recycling program that I need to sign up for yet, but you get a bin from the office and set your recyclables out every couple of weeks. A great service, that’s free. Of course it comes from tax money, so I guess it’s not really free!
I’ve noticed over the last year or so, since watching what I buy, I throw less and less away. I make most of my food from scratch so I don’t throw away a lot of packaging, and we also switched to cloth diapers a few months ago, which helps a lot.
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We pay by the size of trash can we want. Really I think we could switch to a smaller one, since it only needs to go out every 3 weeks or so, but we haven’t made that switch so far. We keep planning a major cleanout of the garage, and while most of the stuff will go to the thrift store, there’s aways some things that are only good for the trash.
I bet it would cause some type of problem with someone or something thats how the world works for sure.
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I live in Philadelphia and we don’t directly pay for once a week garbage pick-up. It is paid for through our taxes. Trash is a big problem, especially in the neighborhoods where students live. Perhaps if they changed it to a pay as you go model rather that through taxes, people would be more careful about what they throw away. Plus the current model taxes everyone the same percentage whether they generate a lot of trash or not.
The city also provides recycling but it is only every other week. This isn’t often enough and everyone is always confused about whether it is recycling week or not.
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