this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Isnt throwing garbage free?
(At least here in Greece it is.)
In the USA, you usually pay for garbage collection services which are private companies that provide you trash and recycling bins and they pick them up from your house on a regular schedule, usually once or twice a week. If you live in a rural area, really rural, you might need to handle your own garbage. In these cases you either haul it in your truck to a dump where you either pay a flat rate to dump, or pay by the pound (they weigh your car before and after), or some places allow you burn trash if you’re really in the middle of nowhere.
Sometimes payment for these services is included in rent, HOA fees, or sometimes you hire/pay seperately.
what the hell
This varies heavily by location. I'm not sure "usually" comes into it. In and around cities it's not uncommon for the city government to handle trash collection. Farther out into the 'burbs or in rural locations you might have to hire a private trash company.
What, too much freedom for you to handle?
yeah we got like 6 companies that take care of trash in my neighborhood
I probably should shop around I'll bet one of them is cheapest
6 different companies?l that just sounds super efficient
On a holiday to a suburban part of the States we walked around and counted over 10 different individual services on a single street. Blew my mind. I get what others are saying that obviously whether you're paying privately or through taxes etc it still costs money, but what really sticks with me is what I can only assume is huge inefficiencies in these areas
In Australia we pay about $700 a year to the local government to collect the bins
worth noting though this is not like a “you sort it out” thing or anything… it’s basically a tax
*council. It's part of your rates. My last were like $150 for recyc/garbage/green
$780 here annually
Jesus. You sure that's not total rates incl fire service?
It can also be included as part of your taxes as well. I used to live literally 1 street over from where the official city limits were (a whole 1 mile from downtown), and while the city provided trash/recycling services within that boundary, anyone outside had to pay like $30/mo for a private service that only did trash pickup, and had to pay another $12/mo for recycling.
In my new town, we're on the very outskirts of the city, but it's all provided by the city as part of our property taxes. We get recycling, trash, and compost services. Best part is you even get 1m³ compost and mulch from the city from the compost service. We grew an absolutely insane amount of vegetables from it last year, it was really awesome.
This is never something I'd have even thought about being privatised, I guess I just assumed it was always in the interest of local authorities to make sure there isn't just shit piling up everywhere and pay for it through taxation. It's also surely much more cost effective to centralise.
Today I not only discover that isn't the case, but that you also commonly have to pay extra to recycle. Like what?! Do poorer people have to just not have their bins collected? Or make a choice about whether things get recycled?!
This has absolutely blown my mind!
If you take it to a refuse & recycling centre yourself (I assume those exist with public access), do you have to pay for that too?!
Yup. As always, it's very expensive to be poor, and you wind up having to haul stuff to the dump yourself, taking the time, fuel, etc to do it.
I didn't pay for recycling with Waste Management, because I knew that 95% of it would go to landfill anyway, so why bother? It's literally just a way for people to greenwash their disposable lifestyle and WM profits off it.
Yes. Even in my town, there's still an additional fee for taking certain things to the disposal/recycling center. It's only a couple of dollars, but it's also mostly for stuff that's hazmat.
I understand not feeling like it's worth the bother to pay for recycling, but aluminum cans and glass are infinitely recyclable.
It's a real shame that plastic makes the whole process seem worthless
Fortunately, my state of Michigan has a seperate program for bottles and cans, and I make damn sure those never go to landfill. Something like 97% of those are recycled here. The only other "recyclable" waste we really had would have been plastics, so like you said there was really no reason. I had a seperate bin for non-returnable glass/steel/aluminum that I'd bring over to a community recycling center every once in a while, so it's not like I was throwing everything out. I still tried my best, but it just really made no sense to pay that much per month for a bin that we'd manage to fill maybe twice a year.
I put in far, far more effort than most to minimize my waste, but there's always a point where it's just not worth it unfortunately.
I didn't know there were municipal compost piles, mine is just down the road, thanks for the tip!
I live in the US and garbage collection is free in my city and many others.
Exactly, the garbage companies work in exchange for exposure/free advertising
What do you think the US some socialist country?! Everything must be a private country because... Capitalism! No "socialized" waste disposal here!
Of course...? Trash collection has to be paid for, either privately or publicly, e.g. taxes. There's an Australian commenter below who pays almost double what I do as a yearly tax. In any case, you can always opt to deal with your own waste.
For example, I could burn, recycle and compost most of it for free. I make mulch from yard waste, ditch metal by posting on FB Marketplace, Craigslist, etc., for the scrap metal guys to grab.
Same for serviceable goods. Just put out some lawn chairs that I don't have the tooling to repair, and they're gone. I used to pick up old vacuum cleaners and repair them for a few dollars, give them to friends and neighbors or sell 'em for $20. (Great little side hustle. 95% of them just need a deep clean, new belt and bag.)
I've picked up a literal ton of stuff that's not good enough for one's home but works great at my camp in the boondocks. Got my wife a new TV yesterday and converted the Styrofoam packing into napalm for starting campfires.
I have two companies to choose from, because competition is good. $35/mo. covers my trash, and since my neighbor doesn't have much money, I let her use my cans. Call it <$20 per household. Think the government could operate that cheaply?
Buddy of mine drives around picking up old washers and dryers for free. Fixes and flips 'em for a nice profit. (This is hilariously easy.) He clears $100+ a pop, and people save $200-$400 on a new machine. Win-win.
In my area, if the government handled it all for "free", all that creative recycling/upcycling would end up in a landfill. Because who would give a shit? When you have to pay out your pocket for disposal it motivates you to think. Why would I bother rinsing and crushing my cans for personal profit if the govenment made them go away for free?
That's not how it works in practice though because most people aren't shits and just put their rubbish in the right bins. It's great that you're motivated to go above and beyond, but I imagine there's a lot more fly-tipping for people who don't want to spend any money or effort.
You realize your taxes pay for collection too. So you either pay a private company or you pay the government.
It's the same in my EU country (at least for single family homes, I don't know about apartments)
The private companies are contracted by the municipalities and I don't think you can legally avoid paying the garbage collection tax/fee.
Afaik they don't give you the option of dealing with your own trash, because that would mean a lot more trash in the forest.
Well obviously someone is paying for garbage collection, I just think a lot of people are used to having it be paid for over tax, so that you don't have to think about remembering to pay your quarterly $85 fee lol.
U.S. truly is a hypercapitalist hellhole. I'm so glad I don't live there.
Or included in property tax, because (as a matter of public health) they really don't want anybody to be able to avoid paying it.
In my city, it's a flat fee per residence (as opposed to scaling with the millage rate), so it's broken out on a separate line-item. It's a little over $500/year.
That's weird. Not sure where you are. Where I live the city just adds it to the utility bill (trash, sewer, and water). That sounds like it's probably expensive. Fuck that.
Outside DC. I have well and septic, so I only pay for trash.
Ohh ok ok. Yeah, very different from Greece. Probably because Greece isn't that much of a capitalistic country I think🤷. We just have some big trash cans (around 1m³ of volume) every like 50meters (±40meters) in residential areas and trucks pick up the garbage.
They are by the streets/in indetations of the pavement (I've seen in other european countries, that they have those trash cans inside an apartment complex instead and other stuff. We had hard time figuring out where to throw our trash in Hungary).
Though people doesnt care very much of what they dispose of and frequnetly you can see stuff like big carboards and abandoned furniture near those trash cans which are rarely collected (many times you have to call the appropriate service of the municipalty).
We also have those small bins (around 50liters) on the pavement scattered around in the cities where you can throw various small garbage.
Some municipalities in the US may also have public trash collection similar to what you describe. It varies a lot from place to place.
In the country, they burn their garbage.
You quickly figure out a way to separate foods, burnables, recyclables, copper, and dump trash
If there's anything I've learned from the Sopranos, it's that the mob is running garbage collection.
Allow is a stretch, back in the rural part of the US I grew up in we burned our trash since there was no trash company that serviced within 50 miles of us. No one cares for the environmental or health impacts of it when there no other realistic option
In certain countries you’ll get fined for dumping garbage, which is why divorce is so expensive.
I've lived in a few places in Canada and I've never heard of paying for trash pickup, it's just a city service.
It's 25$/mo total for the green, blue, and black bins in Calgary
What about people that don't live in the cities?
Depends on where you live. Rural areas often don’t get free trash pickup.
re malaka you pay tax money for services of this kind, it is not free
Lol, indeed you pay through taxes, the other person who commented about paying their country for that reminded it to me.
Though I dont know how much money of the taxes go there.
You're still paying for it, just with taxes.