Are "pay as you throw" trash programs good or bad?

Question

My city is adopting it soon. I think it is a good idea but unrealistic since there is no sense of community here and is full of illegal aliens, so I suspect there will be a lot of dumping and people stealing recycling bins.

Answer 1

There should be a community looking after the trash in order for this idea to kick off.

It is actually a good thing to do as it encourages people to reduce their amount of trash. People will be threaten especially when it hits their pocket hard. Another reason that laymen are not aware of is that treatment of trash is actually very expansive. There are salaries to be accounted for. Not many people would like to do this kinda job. You need rather attractive salary to have people working in this field. Then there are technologies involved. People keep talking about pollution, conservation and everything else yet they are still throwing rubbish like nobody's business. The thing is without technologies there is no way trash problems can be solved and without financial backups, technologies cannot be operated.

Hence, I strongly heed this program of "pay as you throw".

Answer 2

As someone who's reduce their trash I would welcome an opportunity to be rewarded for it. I don't use the system as much so why should I pay as much as my neighbor that has two overflowing cans each week?

But I do see some potential problems with it. What's to stop someone from tossing their trash in your bin? How is it being metered? And I would be concerned about people stockpiling their trash or encouraging an OCD hoarding problem leading to a neighborhood health hazard.

Answer 3

When I moved to my current city I was first introduced to this kind of system and it's fantastic. It does matter how they meter it though. Here it is very simple. You buy either special trash bags that are green or tags to put on your 30 gallon trash can. They only pick-up if they see these. There are city recycling bins, but not trash bins so there isn't an issue with people putting trash into yours. The bags are already closed and/or the trash can is already full. I've saved so much money as compared to my previous city where you had to pay a monthly fee of $20 or so. Here the tags/bags cost $15 for ten and I usually only need to use 2 a month since I do recycle. And also, I doubt the recycling bins will be expensive. Here they are $6 and you never have to buy one again so I doubt too many people will bother stealing them if your city's cost is similar.

Answer 4

Good if people recycle correctly, bad if they don't.   Ceramic cups, diapers and batteries do NOT belong in with glass bottles.   It's just a pain for the recycling center and they will most likely use the whole batch as fill instead of reusing the glass.