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Experts and Officials Weigh In on Trash Metering |
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National, state and local officials are among of the most outspoken proponents of Trash Metering. They see, first hand, the environmental and financial outcomes of successful Trash Metering programs, and encourage municipalities to weigh the benefits of switching over to this waste reduction model.
"Pay-as-you-throw is the same thing as how you pay for electricity. If your neighbors want to burn their lights 24 hours a day, you don't pay, they do. Pay-as-you-throw rewards you for generating less garbage. And it's a way for towns to cover their disposal costs."
Nan Peckham, Waste Planning and Standards, Connecticut DEP (link)
"Pay-As-You-Throw helps to conserve our natural resources, puts raw materials back into the manufacturing sector, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. This is a simple step local government can take to reduce a community's carbon footprint and save money at the same time."
Ian Bowles, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary, State of Massachusetts (link)
"Pay-as-you-throw creates the right mix of incentives - it helps the environment, saves the community money and places the cost of additional disposal on those who wish to dispose more."
Laurie Burt, Commissioner, Massachusetts DEP (link)
"[Regarding the requirement that citizens pay a user fee for waste disposal,] they are basically burning dollars in the incinerator and the ridiculousness of this will just continue. What they should do is pass a PAYT, pay-as-you-throw proposal, that operates in thousands of communities and dramatically increases recycling rates in a very short time period."
Barbara Warren, Executive Director, New York State Citizens Environmental Coalition (link)
"Suffolk County should promote volume-based pricing programs."
Regional Solid Waste Management Commission, Suffolk County, NY (link)
"Implementing a PAYT program is the single most important action most local governments could do to quickly increase the residential sector recycling rate and decrease waste."
Division of Waste Management, Florida DEP (link)
"The city simply needs to encourage New Yorkers to produce less waste in the first place. The single most effective way to do this is to treat sanitation services like other utilities, where you are billed based on your use of the system. The current approach, which involves financing residential waste services out of property taxes, sends the wrong signals. Charging residents according to the amount of refuse they set out for collection is not only fair, but would mean reducing costs for those who produce less refuse. Who among us would relish paying our neighbors' phone or electric bills if costs were simply apportioned equally across the entire city?"
Stephen Hammer and Benjamin Miller, (former) officials, New York City Sanitation Department (link)
"PAYT is a SMART [Save Money And Reduce Trash] way to educate citizens about changing our wasteful habits. When you create a measuring cup for waste and put a value on it, people will think twice about how quickly they fill it up."
Diane Duva, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection(link)
"PAYT is a great tool for educating the public. We now have an environmentally aware community where people are proud of what they are helping to accomplish."
Mick Mercer, Streets and Sanitation Department, Loveland, CO (link)
"The best analogy for PAYT is that it is simply the most fair and equitable way to pay for our trash services, based on how much of the service we use."
Janice L. Canterbury, Project Manager, Pay-As-You-Throw Program, U.S. EPA (link)
"Virtually all the cities and towns that have implemented this program have seen their solid waste disposal costs fall, freeing up money that can instead be used to fund education, public safety, libraries, and other municipal services. Given the urgent need to find savings in our municipal and household budgets and to preserve our environment, every community should evaluate implementing a pay-as-you-throw system for trash disposal."
Jason Lewis, Massachusetts State representative, Winchester (link)
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Trash Metering |
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| Trash Metering - an alternative to the traditional flat fee approach - simply charges households for waste collection and disposal services based on the number of trash bags collected. Trash Metering provides residents with a direct price incentive to reduce their production of solid waste. As a result, recycling programs in cities with Trash Metering consistently have significantly higher participation levels and higher recycling rates in comparison to cities without Trash Metering. |
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Environmental Impact |
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| In more than 300 communities nationwide, the WasteZero System has dramatically impacted residential waste diversion. A 2010 analysis of all WasteZero communities found that the WasteZero System decreased residential MSW by an average 43 percent in weight. A recent study by the US EPA of all Trash Metering municipalities shows that about one-third of diverted waste is diverted directly to recycling, about one-third is diverted to composting, and one-third is "source reduced" (buying in bulk, reduced packaging, etc.). |
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