Having lived in different communities I’ve gotten to experience different systems for handling garbage collection and recycling. For residential garbage collection, one community used Pay As You Throw. This system is similar to utility usage, you pay by volume, those who generate less garbage pay a lower bill than those who generate more garbage.
Your monthly bill is determined by the size trash can you choose. Trash cans are provided by the entity (city or private hauler) that collects your garbage. Of course exceptions should be made for people with special needs, such as care givers and citizens with certain disabilities.
You can reduce your city’s garbage and recycling costs if your community has PAYT for garbage collection complemented by a clean, fenced, manned, recycling drop off center, where citizens sort their recycling into separate bins. Hopefully, with the new administration, Chattanooga is rethinking their current dirty, non transparent recycling system. Chattanooga could also switch to PAYT, thus rewarding those who generate less garbage.
There is no away. Every time we toss something in the trash, we are trashing our children’s future, and the environment. Please reduce, reuse, repair, restore, rethink.
Louise Mann
Signal Mountain
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Sorry to play devil’s advocate, but I cringe even thinking about the citizens (and I use that term loosely) who already don’t care about the trash littered throughout or city and county and I can only imagine if they were to be charged by the pound where that trash will end up, but I can assure you it won’t be in their trash cans or the recycle center.
We can hardly keep up with collecting trash thrown from vehicles and rubbish falling out of commercial garbage trucks driving through our community as it is. Where does that trash go, into our big green can at almost a 39 gallon bag every week. I would hate to think myself and others would now get charged by the pound for doing a simple community service free of charge to the city, county and the community.
The bottom line is the ones that are doing their part for the environment will continue to do so for the simple fact it is the right thing to do, and the ones that don’t care about where their trash ends up will continue to “throw as they go”.
Chris Morgan
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Pay As You Throw or some similar programs have been around for decades. The Florida community where I was raised launched a program where residents purchased heavy duty bags with the city seal for 40 cents each and all trash was to be placed in them. The only exceptions were newspapers, which could be bundled and tied with string, and palm fronds, which had to be cut no more than three feet in length and tied together.
My creative Uncle Al had a solution, he put out what he wanted without buying bags, along with a foam cooler with ice and a six-pack and there was never an issue with items not being collected.
Of course, the obvious problems with such an option today would be dogs and wildlife digging into bags to seek a meal, along with mischievous bored teenagers scattering the contents late at night.
The city of Chattanooga has provided weekly trash pickup for decades, yet I remember all too well how many times I found the dumpster overflowing outside the McCallie Avenue store that I ran in the mid-1980s, filled with furniture, dead animals, trash and other discards, then next to the dumpster once it was full. Maybe it was only non-Chattanooga residents who took the time to find and overfill this dumpster, but I think not.
Consider Pay As You Throw to be an item worthy of adding to the trash, no matter how well meaning it may be.
Ken Dryden
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So how would this charge work? Different charges for differing-sized containers. What about when you’re on vacation and have less refuse? Or during Christmas…will there be a holiday-size container?
This idea would simply cost our city more. Besides, curbside garbage collection costs are taken from tax revenues. Is the charge taken from our property tax assessments on a monthly basis or would this simply be an additional tax on top of our existing taxes?
Anyone remember when Ron Littlefield threatened fines to residents who had the audacity to put anything recyclable in their trash? How did that go?
Will Chattanooga be forced to purchase even newer collection trucks that can weigh your trash can as it goes?
And what do you with apartment dwellers who use communal dumpsters? Does everyone get charged the same amount when no one produces the same amount of trash?
Ms. Mann, your idea was not thoroughly thought out. The only way to make garbage collection costs equitable is for there to be no curbside pick-up at all, demanding everyone take their own garbage down to the landfill and have individual bags weighed. Are you up for that, Ms. Mann?
Dave Fihn