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Trash Metering and Fiscal Conservatism |
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Trash Metering is an eco-friendly model grounded in free-market concepts. Many of the nation's most distinguished conservative economists and political scholars have urged communities to adopt Trash Metering. Leading conservative think tanks like the Reason Foundation, the Goldwater Institute, and the Adam Smith Institute have spoken out on the inherent fairness and effectiveness of Trash Metering. As they point out, Trash Metering is wholely aligned with the fiscal conservative ideals of government efficiency, personal freedom and responsibility, and fairness.
"Trash pricing, often known as 'pay-as-you-throw' is a way to use that good old capitalist tool, pricing, to create more market-based incentives for recycling, and ensure that those who use more trash services pay more. The idea is that people who throw away more stuff pay more. Very simple indeed, and effective, as research has shown."
Adrian Moore, VP Research, Reason Foundation (link)
"Charging households by their use is the most fair and free way for [a city] to pay for its garbage collection."
Ted Wells, Ronald Reagan Fellow, Goldwater Institute (link)
"The evidence from around the world is clear: the best way to increase recycling is to introduce pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) waste charges. PAYT would encourage much greater consumer-led environmentalism. Knowing that they will pay for waste disposal, consumers will demand less unnecessary packaging and more recyclable materials from producers and retailers. Consumer led environmentalism is much more effective than government regulation. Put simply, shoppers mean more to businesses than legislators, because shoppers mean profits."
Adam Smith Institute (link)
"PAYT is the single most effective change a community can make to its garbage and recycling program."
Reason Foundation (link)
"The advantages of giving householders financial incentives to recycle are clear. It means greater source reduction and more recycling. More importantly, PAYT makes householders aware of the true costs of waste management. It would be the single most effective measure to make citizens more environmentally conscious. Businesses would respond, as they recognize that if customers pay for waste, then they can attract customers by better packaging and their green credentials. PAYT is a lever on the wider issues of packaging and producer responsibility."
Adam Smith Institute (link)
"Applying market principles to waste management would reduce the volume of trash generated, and would be one of the most effective approaches to waste management. That approach would also benefit the environment, by shifting the incentives to throw out, recycle, or compost..[PAYT] reduces the costs of solid waste management, reduces landfill costs, and improves the environment by reducing the amount of solid waste..Under a [PAYT] system.families have a lot of control over their waste haulage bills, because they have control over how much waste they generate and how much they recycle or compost. Moreover, variable rates remove the implicit subsidy to large waste generators, so if these families are not large waste generators, they are more likely to see their bills go down than up."
Heartland Institute (link)
"Eliminating waste in honest and economic ways will always benefit society. The best answer is a 'pay as you throw' program, where solid waste collection is paid for not by taxpayers generally, but by individuals or households based on the volume of garbage they discard. In some communities today, families must buy special trash bags that hold their waste for disposal.
The more trash bags they use, the more they pay. To lower their costs, they can alter their buying and disposal habits. They can buy products with less packaging. They can compost organic wastes. They can reuse many of their waste materials."
Jay Lehr, Ph.D., Science Director, Heartland Institute (link)
"It appears that the application of the price system to waste disposal might be not only environmentally and economically beneficial, but perhaps even politically feasible."
Daniel K. Benjamin, Researcher, Property and Environment Research Center (link)
"The whole cost [of American garbage collection] is hidden since the amount of taxes you pay is totally unrelated to the amount of trash you generate, except for the few communities that have pay-by-the-bag systems."
Richard Porter, Ph.D., economist and author of "The Economics of Waste" (link)
"Your trash is already your private property. You should be responsible for getting rid of it. You should have to pay to get rid of it- and you should pay whatever price it takes to insure that your garbage doesn't cause environmental problems for anyone else..Once people switch to this pay-as-you-throw system, they throw away less-typically at least 10 to 15 percent less. Some shop differently, some take their names off junk-mail lists; some recycle.. [T]hey're personally motivated to figure out what's worth paying to discard and what's worth diverting to a recycling bin. Those who want to recycle for spiritual reasons can do so; others can recycle whatever makes economic sense to them. If the pay-as-you-throw system became common everywhere, there would be no need for recycling laws and goals and moral exhortations."
John Tierney, columnist, New York Times (link)
"Recycling programs only encourage recycling. Pay as you throw programs encourage recycling, composting, and source reduction - and source reduction is the cheapest waste management strategy..Variable-pricing programs help the environment, lead to more efficient resource use, and lower solid waste management system costs."
Kenneth Green, Ph.D., chief scientist, Reason Foundation (link)
"I like the free-market aspect of paying for the amount of trash you produce. It makes sense to me."
Alex Mooney (R), State Senator, Maryland (link)
"[The] pay-as-you-throw fee system reminds us that prices give information to consumers - and that information creates incentives for conservation. Just about all Seattle residents can tell you ways that they limit trash generation so that they can limit their trash bill. They recycle, they compost, they make sure to take old clothes to the thrift store, they eliminate 'resident-only' mail delivery, they feed scraps to the pet pig."
Lynn Scarlett, (former) VP Research, Reason Foundation (link)
"Why should an elderly woman living alone and generating far less trash pay the same for trash collection as an apartment full of college students?....Introducing variable pricing allows people to choose the best option for their needs, a determination only they can make. In this way, it avoids the over-use problem of single-rate schemes. If there is only one price for trash collection, the incentive is to throw away as much as possible..It makes economic sense to pay more to throw away more."
Noah Clarke, economist, Goldwater Institute (link)
"The best way to get people to be careful about what they discard is to charge them by-the-[unit]..We should.adopt an integrated approach to municipal solid waste management. Such an approach would include sensible landfilling and incineration along with recycling and prudent packaging decisions, all based on cost-benefit comparisons..The cure is simple: discard counterproductive government interventions, privatize, get the prices right, and allow individuals, guided by those prices, to make their own choices."
Charles W. Baird, professor of economics, California State University (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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