Budget crunch revives pay-to-throw trash idea
What environmentalism couldn't accomplish 15 years ago, a budget crunch might do now.
The idea of pay-as-you-throw trash collection is resurfacing in Brookline, which examined and scrapped the idea in 1993 largely because of concerns that it wouldn't work in a setting with many apartments.
Several communities of similar size and density, such as Attleboro, have since provided a model for implementing the concept successfully. More important to Brookline, however, is the prospect of a budget deficit in the fiscal year starting next July.
All town agencies face the choice of either becoming more efficient before the next fiscal year begins or making cuts from their budgets.
Thus, pay-as-you-throw is back on the table for Brookline, which would become just the second of the communities contiguous to Boston to implement the idea. (Milton is the only one now.)
"We're just at the study stage," said John Dempsey of Brookline's Solid Waste Advisory Committee. "But we can't ignore pay-as-you-throw. We need to reduce spending on waste."
In 1993, Scott Cassel studied the issue for Brookline's volunteer trash committee. After Town Meeting declined to consider the matter, he said, he was hired as the state's director for waste policy and planning for the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. From there, he helped start the pay-per-bag movement statewide, while Brookline continued to push recycling by other means.
"I was skeptical about the program at the time, but as I researched it, I realized that it really made sense," Cassel said. "What do you want to pay for, trash or other things?"
Under a typical pay-as-you-throw system, residents buy stickers for $1 to $2 each, and affix them to bags of trash. Only bags with stickers are picked up at curbside, though some communities require the trash to be dropped off at transfer stations. Currently, 120 of the state's 351 communities practice some form of the concept.
In Brookline, these fees would replace the current $200 annual trash fee (subsidized by tax dollars) for curbside pickup.
Since the discussion is still in its infancy, few objections have been raised so far.
"I think we'll hear from people once this gets discussed more," said Selectwoman Betsy DeWitt, who worries about implementing a more complex system than the town has now.
Back in 1993, the defeat of pay-as-you-throw resulted mostly from the objections of small landlords, who worried about increased costs from tenant behavior they could not be expected to control, Cassel said.
Whether or not these landlords will repeat that opposition, selectmen are hedging their bets on pay-as-you-throw. When the Solid Waste Committee told selectmen last month that it was considering reopening the issue, the board told it to consider other cost-cutting measures as well, Dempsey said.
The Board of Selectmen will formally charge the committee, which is being formed this week and next, on July 15.
The pay-per-bag system does have strong advocates in and outside of town.
"It's only fair," said Joseph Lambert, the state Department of Environmental Protection's pay-as-you-throw promoter. "You only pay for what you toss." He thinks older, single people shouldn't have to pay the same flat rate as large families or group homes.
Still the most intriguing argument for Brookline is the effect the pay-per-bag system has on garbage costs. They would drop, mostly because residents would have an incentive to reduce trash and increase recycling -which costs municipalities much less to handle than other types of solid waste.
In Attleboro, for instance, which has had a pay-per-bag system since 2005, 49 percent of all solid waste was recycled in 2006, according to state calculations - which don't include heavy yard waste.
As Ed Gilbert, recycling maven for Brookline's Department of Public Works, will attest, less trash means more cash for the town.
For the fiscal year that started last Monday, Gilbert estimates a recycling rate of about 35 percent. If the recyclables had instead been regular trash, it would have cost about $47,000 in "tipping fees" to dispose of refuse at a Cape Cod incinerator.
Further, if the recyclables happen to be cardboard or paper, the town gets a check - $90 per ton or about $2,500 each month this year, Gilbert said - as the market for these materials is hot.
In Worcester, which collects trash and recyclables curbside, residents are comfortable with the 15-year-old system, said Bob Fiore, the town's assistant to the commissioner of public works. And people throw out less; the recycling rate, including yard waste, is about 50 percent, Fiore said.
That's about average for all towns in the state that implement pay-as-you-throw, said Lambert. In a pay-as-you-throw community, a typical family generates 500 pounds of trash a year, he said, about half the amount of families in communities without the system.
Is the extra being dumped illegally? Not usually, Lambert said.
"Most people won't drag a bag of garbage into the park," he said. "Mostly we see dumping of yard waste, or tires, alongside roads." For that, the state has a special environmental strike force, which will stake out and nab illegal dumpers.
In Worcester, Fiore staked out some common dumping grounds with a video camera (sample videos can be viewed online at ci.worcester.ma.us/dpw/). All the culprits, he said, were nonresidents. 