This city has begun to impose fees on garbage next to the bag. This is what happened

Even a few years ago, the city of Playbpton, Massachusetts, was literally raising money. People were so much that people were so threatened to get the municipal transport station out of work.

Under the city system, the residents were buying a $ 240 poster for their cars, which allowed them to reach the course of the year, as they could get rid of the lunar garbage they wanted. But the massive volume, along with climbing fees, means that this service was costing the local government nearly twice that it was.

One of the solutions was to double the price of discharge stickers, but that would hit the population of Blameptone with a particularly low-income, and will not be fair to the younger families-like the elderly-produce the minimum trash. Therefore, the town of approximately 3,000 people decided to try something that other municipalities saw: a charge for each bag.

“The waste was almost cut in half.” In 2022, before the new system, the city threw 640 tons of garbage. Last year, this number was 335 tons. “People have pushed more recycling, because it saves them money,” said Verlot.

Stickers are now sold for $ 65 each, and residents buy garbage bags with distinctive signs ($ 1.25 for a bag with a capacity of 15 gallons, $ 2.50 for 33 gallons). This means that a bed that produces a small garbage bag every week will spend $ 130 annually – less than $ 350 than it was if Plympton decides to double the prices of stickers instead. The city says it has reduced the garbage disposal bill almost half, saving about $ 65,000 a year.

“We have moved from a deficiency to a break,” said Verlot.

Plamepton is not alone in his success. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection at Massachusetts, Almost half of the 351 municipality in the state A copy of this form is adopted “Pay-S-You-HROW” or PayT. In 2023, places with Payt collected nearly a third of the waste, or about 513 pounds for each family. Study 2018 in New Hampshire Similarly detailedly detailed Differences.

“We have found that the demand for waste disposal was really responding to the price,” said John Haltement, the author of this research and a retired professor of environmental economy at New Hampshire University. “If you raise the price of garbage, people will find ways to not put much in the sidewalk.”

Many other countries used paid garbage collection for decades. Lisa Skomaz, president of Skumatz Economic Research Associats, a consulting company for energy, recycling and sustainability, said limited examples in the United States dating back to the early twentieth century, Lisa Scomaz, President of Skumatz Economic Resocations, a consulting company for energy, recycling and sustainability. But the contemporary implementation in America really began to rise in the eighties until the early first decade of the twentieth century, and has witnessed steady growth since then.

Although there are no modern national data on PayT, Skumatz estimates that about a quarter of people in the United States can reach a type of size based on size. Not only does this include brands of weights like Plympton, but programs based on the size of the boxes (As in Denver and Seattle), Or where people distinguish each bag of garbage (as is the case With at least one spread in Perlington, Vermont). All Oregon state societies You can reach some Payt repetition, and the Council for its Natural Resources Defense Typical bill Others can use it if they are thinking about his experience.

One of the keys to success is to verify alternatives Case –Love Recycling and Permanenta –Strong as possible. “You should really be able to facilitate families to reduce garbage,” said Linda Brigon, a prominent lawyer at the Institute of Non -profitable Environmental Law. Regardless of money saving, I also noticed that less production of garbage can mean less greenhouse gas emissions than waste or holes can enhance recycled material supply, which then avoid the virgin materials used.

“You can get a lot of joint competitions,” she said.

However, change often meets the resistance. Transfer often prefer, for example, the simplicity of the garbage in bulk when hundreds of stops on the sidewalk side (they also have waste burials that receive a lot of tinnitus). For residents, garbage fees that may be baked in their taxes can become suddenly visible.

Skumatz said: “People are accustomed to the garbage that you have for decades for decades,” Skumatz said. (But) all eating buffets lead to a lot of waste and a lot of bad behaviors. “

There are three main ways to produce less than garbage – the transfer of waste in the first place, and turn it into recycling or compost instead of the landfill. Payment by the bag encourages all these alternatives and also helps in reaching beyond the basic group of delusions, or advocates of environmental protection, who already reduce, reuse and recycle.

“You have to get the next group and the next group,” Skumatz said. “Many of these people respond to financial incentives.”

A basic argument between skeptics of payment, is that it can lead to illegal dumping. But Skumatz said that approximately 1,000 cities included in its poll had witnessed only a quarter of any height, and until then, it only lasted about three months. Although it is difficult to know whether bye is leading people to disrupt the recycling stream with garbage, it is not a problem that I heard a lot of complaints.

“After six months, people tend to really prefer Payt over the previous regime,” she said. “But it is really difficult for many societies to overcome it.”

Verlot said that Plamepton saw some grumbling at first, but not a ton because the alternative was doubled the price of the poster. The elderly were especially excited about the new approach, given the lack of trash that they tend to produce. From the beginning, officials were also keen to inhibit illegal dumping or dirty recycling stream, so Verlot said that fraud was outward.

He said, “For us, it has succeeded in a wonderful way.”

This article was originally appeared in Barrier in https://grist.org/accoundability/what-one-town- Learned-by-charge-resedents-for-every-bag-of-trash/. Grist is a non -profit and independent media organization dedicated to the novel of climate solution stories and a just future. Learn more in Grist.org.