Here's an idea: What if we were to charge for garbage collection in the same way we charge for water? The water bill for your xeriscaped yard is much less than that of a neighbor who needs to water his large Kentucky Bluegrass lawn daily during the summer-long struggle to keep it green. Similarly, as conscientious recyclers, shouldn't your family be rewarded for your efforts to save valuable resources (just as you are for conserving water), rather than being charged the same as the household who throws everything away?
In Boulder County today, garbage collection rates are not unit-based, like water rates, but rather volume-based: it costs just slightly more to throw out two garbage cans per week than to throw out one. This volume-based approach to charging for garbage collection creates an incentive to produce more trash; the more you throw out, the less it costs on a volume basis. But you don't pay less per unit of water if you use more of it; why then should your cost per unit of trash go down if you throw out more garbage?
The unit-based approach to garbage collection is called Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT), and is used in thousands of communities across the United States. In fact, though it has yet to take hold in Boulder County, PAYT is one of the hottest new waste reduction trends spreading across the country.
Here's how it works. Once a "unit" is defined (for example, a typical 32-gallon trash can), each can of service costs the same. Throwing out two cans per week costs twice as much as throwing out one can. Five-can service costs five times as much as one-can service, and so on. This creates a financial incentive for households and rewards those who reduce waste and recycle - the less you throw out, the less you pay.
Key to making PAYT work is providing opportunities for people to do something with their trash other than throwing it out. Waste reduction and precycling education programs, reuse facilities, expansion of curbside collection services, yard and other organic waste composting programs - these are the other puzzle pieces needed to allow PAYT to flourish.
A recent EPA analysis has shown that PAYT is a key component of the discard management programs of communities diverting 50% or more of their waste stream. With our own 50% diversion goal looming ahead of us in 2005, the time has come for Boulder County communities to take a serious look at Pay-As-You-Throw as a waste reduction tool for the future.
