Should households get charged for how much trash they throw away?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ May 5 2007, 07:16 PM) [snapback]436212[/snapback]</div>

Of course they should. There should also be an escalating rate for those using more than a set amount of energy IMO. If their habits are going to degrade our systems and endanger our health then they should be charged accordingly.

There are some who feel they should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they can afford it. I disagree but whatever. lol

 

If you start to penalize people for putting too much garbage out on garbage pickup day, you start to have problems with illegal dumping. That's why they finally had to get rid of the $15 charge to dispose of a CRT in CA.

I don't know how you encourage "good" behavior. Maybe a rebate based on percentage of total garbage weight that has been sorted for recycling.

 

I'll bet that's already the case in Ventura, isn't it?

I'm in Oxnard, right next door, and we do pay by the amount we throw out. We have a green waste container, and then a split garbage/recyclables container. The split can has on the trash side an amount about equal to a 50 gallon trash can. To get another container for trash, you have to pay more.

 

My town uses city supplied containers which can be automatically lifted and unloaded by the truck. If you don't have that much trash (usually empty nesters), you can get a smaller container for a smaller fee. Empty container volume is sometimes shared by neighbors doing spring cleaning!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ May 5 2007, 10:16 PM) [snapback]436212[/snapback]</div>

I've also read of places where trash could only be disposed of in city-supplied bags -- that's how they monitored and charged for trash volume. If nothing else, it was a strong incentive to put in a trash compactor. I believe there have been communities were trash compactors were mandatory in new construction, but I'm not so sure about that. Seems like you hardly even hear the phrase "trash compactor" these days. Didn't solve the issue of mass, but reduced the total volume.

I think the main issue for most places is the basic economics of it, not the environmental impact as such. For most locations, the decision is largely about the cost of disposal vs the cost of monitoring/compliance to reduce the waste stream. If you have cheap disposal at hand, most places aren't willing to hassle their residents over it.

Where I live (Vienna Va) they've had a long-standing policy of making it as easy as possible to recycle. We just dump all the recyclable bottles and cans into a plastic bag, they pick it up once a week, along with cardboard and such. They've stopped picking up "white goods" (dead appliances) for free, which means you have to have them hauled to the County facility and pay some nominal fee. The county collects routine toxics (e,g, car batteries) at sites all over the county. More difficult stuff requires that you drop it off at one of two sites (e.g., pesticides).

My understanding is that Town of Vienna makes the whole operation pay for itself. It's not like we're shelling out tax dollars to make this work. Odd thing is, the real money-maker for them is yard waste (grass clippings, leaves, woody debris). It's a money maker because they work really hard to divert it from the waste stream, so they avoid the tipping fees at the landfill. Out here in the Virginia 'burbs, yard waste makes up an almost unbelievable fraction of the curbside waste stream (my vague recollection is something like 15-20%). Putting aside what I view as the absolute idiocy of fertilizing your lawn, the norm is to fertilize, make the grass grow fast, mow and bag the clippings, and toss the bags of clippings. (Meanwhile, the runoff from suburban lawns is perhaps the third most important source of excess nutrients in the Chesapeake.) So the town pulls it, grinds it, and composts it (along with the autumn leaf fall), and gives away the compost/mulch.

Still, it wouldn't fuss me if they decided to charge by volume for regular trash. Might make me think a little harder before I bought things. Even with the recycling, I'm appalled at the voume of trash my family generates.

 

My town went to a pay per bag program this year and this is the result so far:

Before the pay-per-bag program, the town collected an average of 103 tons of trash per week from residents and about 22 tons of recycling materials. Twelve weeks into the program, those figures changed to an average of 58 tons of garbage and 33 tons of recycled material.

This is good news for all. The bags are a dollar each. The recycling is a single stream program.
The town gave out coupons to cover the first 15 bags per household. There is a program in place to provide town assistance to low income families. So far... There has been no qualtified increase in illegal dumping.

This is progress, not perfection.

It is "double taxation" and we have not lowered the budget for public works. I do "believe" that trash is everybodys problem and averybody should pay the same, like the schools.... Education, trash, water, sewer, are the basic core components of every community for a clean and safe environment and I do not like it that I now have to pay for a bag to dispose of my trash. However if this is as bad as it gets to do my part to help reduce our burden then i am on board with the concept. I do think it penalizes larger families but the overall amount if money is small and if anything slowing our population rate isn't a bad thing.

 

We have various variations of paying for the ammount of trash you produce here. Some use special bags, at least one city actually weighs your trash. An RFID-chip in your trash container links it you your account and the container is weighed during emptying.

The special bags stimulate people not to put their bags outside until they're full. Some say that causes unhealthy situations in the homes of poor people. People also tend to dump their garbage elsewhere illegally.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ May 6 2007, 01:29 AM) [snapback]436268[/snapback]</div>

We have three sizes of containers plus three sizes of recycling. I have the largest of each. Recycling is every other week and they have increased the list of items they'll take. My new year's resolution this year was to recycle more. They take clean food tins now, so I'm rinsing out my cans and including them in the recycling. I don't fill the big container each week, but sometimes I do need it even after the recycling is removed. We also have composting at our landfill so I can take all of my yard trimmings there and dumpt them for FREE. I can also bring my own shovels and containers and take all of the mulch and compost I want for FREE in return for dumping my yard clippings.

Our city has greatly improved the efficiency of it's trash program this way, but I think they need to give us big green bins for yard waste. I see too many people putting garden stuff in the trash.

We have tiered water and tiered gas/electrical so the less you use the less you pay.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tnthub @ May 6 2007, 08:32 AM) [snapback]436323[/snapback]</div>

What makes you think schools don't pay?

Schools pay for sewer, water, gas, electrical and everything else a home owner pays for. Our schools have dumpsters and pay for a service to take that away. I'm sure the fee for disposal is part of that service and schools get NOTHING for free. We also recycle cardboard (the cafeteria generates a lot with deliveries), wood pallets and have plastic, paper and aluminum recycling programs.

Our school just installed photovoltaic panels on all of the roofs.

 

I'm all for it. We usually generate one medium sized kitchen trash bag every week. Every other week we sometimes have to use a second bag to hold trash from waste baskets in the bath/bed rooms. I'd love to pay less since we generate less trash than our neighbors. We also recycle (including cardbord and paper board) and since a few months ago, have started composting too.

Everything really should be tiered based on consumption levels.

Glad to hear that the program's started out on the right foot. Trash almost cut in half and recycling up 50%, that's pretty substantial.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ May 6 2007, 12:15 PM) [snapback]436375[/snapback]</div>

What I was trying to sday was that all people pay taxes to the school budget regardless if they have kids or not... Schools do pay for everything, with our tax dollars. My wife and I have no kids. I think the schools, garbage, recycling, water and sewer should just be provided for residential use as part of a budget overhead expense regardless of what we use or not. If we are going to meter water or metwer trash, then why not meter other easily qualtifiable items such as kids using the schools?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tnthub @ May 6 2007, 09:32 AM) [snapback]436323[/snapback]</div>

That's an astonishingly large impact. Granted looks like 12 weeks this year vesus all of prior year, but wow, that's still a big impact even with the caveats. Your town hasn't posted anything like a week-by-week or 'same-prior-period' figure, has it?

Ah, the interesting stuff I never knew about. A large number of Maine towns have done this, as summarized in this readable report from the state of Maine:

http://www.maine.gov/spo/recycle/docs/PAYT2000report.pdf

They call it "pay as you throw" trash collection.

Here's one from PA:
http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/ai...ACTS/Perbag.htm

Here's another study of Maine, but it's a cross-sectional comparison not a pre-post (before and after) comparison:

http://www.umaine.edu/mcsc//MPR/Vol4No2/criner.htm

Indiana also:
http://www.in.gov/recycle/topics/payt/docs/toolkit.pdf

Conveniently, they say pay-as-you-throw reduces solid municipal waste by an average of 40%. Consistent tnthub's experience above. All the references seem to indicate that "improper diversion" (like dumping it by the side of the road) is small but noticeable problem.

Ah, and here's the US EPA saying what I just figured it. It's dumb not to have pay-as-you-throw, and the concept is catching on all over America, and that a quarter of US municipalities now have it (which is not at all the same as saying that one-quarter of US household garbage is collected this way - that stat wasn't there).

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/payt/to...n/winter-07.htm

I take back my original comment. That reduction in garbage is along the lines of what others have experienced. Putting the financing issue aside (yes, I agree it ought to have been budget-neutral), if a buck a bag gets you reductions of that magnitude, it's just dumb not to have pay-per-throw.

Yet another example where a small price gets you a big environmental impact. If that average 40% reduction number is anywhere near ballpark, I'd say this one classes as clear low-hanging fruit.

I'm going to bring this up to the town council here.

 

California communities have been under a state-imposed mandate to reduce their solid waste by 50%, and we have achieved that goal:

From http://www.epa.gov/region09/waste/features...aste/index.html

 

Indeed. I'm glad to hear that 1.) this type of thing has a big payback, and 2.) that it's easy to implement.

Good luck with the town council. Sounds like it could be an easy sell.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tnthub @ May 6 2007, 12:11 PM) [snapback]436400[/snapback]</div>

Whether you have kids in school or not you benefit from those children being well educated. They grow up to get good jobs, pay taxes and pay for things that you benefit from. Those children grow up to become your firemen, policemen, trash collectors and the salespeople you buy things from. What kind of society would you live in if only those that had children paid for their education? The costs would be so high that only those that could pay would educate their children. The rest would be...illiterate. Welcome to the the third world.

Why should I subsidize the Stadium when I am not a sports fan, don't go and don't watch? Because it raises revenue for the city that I *do* benefit from because it pays for police and fire salaries and sewer lines.

Maybe only those people whose homes actually caught on fire should pay a fee for fire services?

You pay taxes that go to schools because even though you personally have no children you benefit from other people's children being educated. You should want them to get the very best education money can buy.

 

Yea, I get it... I just think it is a slippery slope when dealing wither proportioned services... Most people do have kids and I remember what being a kid was like. It is just the system of inefficiencies with which I have a problem. In my town they are looking at building a new school when we have an air station demobilizing, real estate prices are dropping, and the long term economics are questionable at best. We also have a declining child population in part due to the base closure. We do have a really great high school (new in the last 15 years and I can't for the life of me figure out why the town won't consider consolidating our old school buildings into a consolidated education park or sorts (we have plenty of open land) to consolidate costs, implement some sort of pay for performance program for the teachers, and charge our private college the going rate for property taxes so the average overworked and underpaid citizen can have a little relief. It's about not being wasteful with our resources and being fair with any redistribution.

Oh yea... A boat launch will be implemented with state money and maintained by the town less than a mile from my house. This is fine. However this same town I live in determined the marina (between the new boat launch and my home), can't expand their moorings because parked cars will create too much pollution in the bay. So... A new boat launch with parking for 140 vehicles is ok?

I just want the insanity to stop.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tnthub @ May 6 2007, 08:32 AM) [snapback]436323[/snapback]</div>

So where'd the other 34 tons go? No fair putting it under the rug.

 

i think it's a good idea. we have three cans in the house: trash, recycling (equal size) and a smaller food waste/compost can. we generate a medium bag of trash every 8 days or so. meanwhile, we fill up the recycling and have been paying closer attention to what can go in the compost.

i think we would really only need to put the can out for collection every 3-4 weeks if not for the kitty litter smell. but every week in the neighborhood i see overfilled trash cans on the curb. while we don't pay for collection (we rent, so we do indirectly) it would irk me if we were paying the same amount as everyone else.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ May 6 2007, 04:19 PM) [snapback]436474[/snapback]</div>

I'll take a stab at the missing mass and other questions. One place it might go is yard waste that does not get put into the trash stream now. No idea if that is or is not a factor there, but it's a big chunk of the waste stream here, and most people could let most of that stuff quietly decompose in a corner of their yard if they chose to. Tough to believe it would be that much -- might just as easily be the 12 week versus full year comparison that's throwing it off -- but in some places that's a big chunk of the municipal solid waste tonnage.

On the issue of why you'd pay for this per piece, and the schools, and such, that's a pretty heavy topic. I don't want to get into it much but there are both equity and efficiency considerations. You'd move the trash to a pay-per-bag to make it more efficient. There's a real efficiency reason to do it, and all the data suggest that you do indeed get efficiency gains out of out. Total costs down, total environmental impact down, those are both things that are good, on average, for the citizens of the town. It's just a question of getting those cost savings shared out back to the taxpayers.

The total cost, to the town, of hauling trash, ought to have fallen by quite a bit, and, all other things equal, they ought to have put that in budget-neutral and generated some type of tax rebate. Unless they are going bust from some other reason -- doesn't sound from the later emails like the economic climat there is very good. One thing I can say from looking at the EPA website, iIt's hard to predict what money will come in when during the startup of pay-per-bag, so small towns in particular get get into a cash crunch if they give up the tax base as they are instituting the pay-per-bag. But once this is in place half a year, yes, you ought to ask them when they are going to rebate the savings out, or what.

On the schools thing, I'll offer my two cents. It boils down to just a couple of things. First, as Adam Smith said in 1776, the wealth of nations is based on the productive capacity of its people (and land and capital). Seems trite but was a radical notion then. For a national to remain wealty, it has to find ways to let its people (and land and capital) be used efficiently. You can't take big blocks of the population and say, in effect, you are doomed to do menial labor all your life, tough luck, we don't care what else you might have been able to do. I mean, you can, but the overall productivity of the population will fall. And the wealth of the nation will fall. Because you've wasted the talents of that subset of people. My second point is that, for all intents and purposes, talent and ability are randomly distributed at birth. Or near enough to it. Yeah, that's arguable, but ... that's my belief for which I could put up some crappy data if required. And it's a very American belief, I'd say. But if we, as a nation, were to take, say, the lowest Nth percent of the population (say, lowest third) in terms of income, and in effect say tough luck, your kids have to remain uneducated because you personally are too poor to pay for schooling, you in effect say, you one-third of the population, you are doomed to do menial labor all your life. And you will in all likelihood reduce the long-run average wealth of the upper two-thirds, even net of school taxes, because America as a whole will be a less productive place, and see point 1 above. (That's a wordy way of getting to the third world comment above, I guess.) I wouldn't use that to justify any open-ended subsidy to education, I wouldn't use that to justify what your local school authority is doing (because I think my own Fairfax County school system does some pretty bizarre things from time to time), but I would be willing to say, that's a reasonable argument why we, as a nation, ought to support free public education. Just like every other civilized country in the world. I mean, at some point, I think that's telling you something, that any place you'd care to live, that's how they work the schools. Then you could reasonably debate what is and isn't reasonable in that regard.

I guess what I'm saying is, education and trash really are different. But for either one, you can pick the degree to which you fund it jointly versus the degree to which you make each individual pay per-piece. For trash, you want less, so you shift the finding to pay-per-bag. (Most municipalites, the per-bag fees don't cover the entire trash service -- some is still paid out of general revenues. They don't shift all the cost to the per-bag fees, only a fraction of it. All they want is for people to be more conservative in what they toss in the garbage.) For schools, our tradition, coming out of an era when average wealth was far lower, has been to make almost all the cost come out of general revenues. I could see shifting the mix some -- toward some modest per-pupil fee, excepting the poor in that -- and so somewhat reduce the burden on those with no children in school. That doesn't strike me as a radical thought. But I think just from a dollars-and-sense perspective, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we made it straight per-pupil charges. We might even get a more efficiently-run school system if we did that. Might. I'd need to see the data. But I'd guess that the overall productivity losses from excluding the children of the poor (and middle class?) from education would be far, far larger than any cost savings in education. So no doubt we could get some short-term tax savings by going to a per-pupil charge and excluding the poor and lower-middle class from the school system, but I think in the long run we'd pay for that many times over in lost productivity and ultimately in reduced wealth even for the wealthier segment of the population.

You know, the odd thing is that that as I understand it, this had nothing to do with why some of the Founding Fathers (e.g., Franklin) were in favor of universal free pubic education. It was much more for socializing the population -- to make them all Americans, and because democracy requires an educated population to run. So, that's another thought. You don't want to leave the children of the poor un-educated, because they'll grow up and vote fools and demagogues into power. You want a population that is educated enough to value their freedoms and be able to separate fact from fiction to some degree.