NH Towns Are Talking Trash

By Rebecca Kaufman on Wednesday, February 22, 2006.

listen:

Trash is not something most of us want to spend too much time thinking about. We put it into the trash bin, we put it outside on the curb on trash pick-up day, or take it to the dump. And we go through the same routine the next week. But what we are throwing away is something town and city officials across the state are spending a lot of time thinking about. Thatâ€™s mainly for one reason: getting rid of waste is expensive and that cost is only going up. More and more towns are considering the concept known as pay as you throw to help cut back on what the town sends to the dump. New Hampshire Public Radioâ€™s Rebecca Kaufman reports that the idea does seem to save townâ€™s money. The hardest part is convincing residents that they might too.

For town managers, itâ€™s practically in their job description that at any given time they wonâ€™t be the most popular person in town.

For Rick Bates, town manager in Raymond, thatâ€™s a sentiment heâ€™s confronting a bit more often than usual these days.

"Iâ€™ve become the target, the man everyone loves to hate."

Bates is half-joking when he says that.

But he admits that he never understood just how personal an issue trash can be until the town began their pay as you throw program in June of 2005.

"People had a belief that trash collection and solid waste was free, and it wasnâ€™t free, itâ€™s a huge part of our budget."

In fact, says Bates, the town of Raymond, population of around 10,000, was throwing away as much as the city of Dover, which is nearly 3 times as big.

At 72 dollars a ton, trash was costing the town dearly.

"The budget, when I looked at it I said we are paying more for trash than weâ€™re paying for fire, recreation, library and welfare combinedâ€¦it just seemed to me we are taking 800,000 dollars of your hard earned tax dollars and throwing it in a hole in Rochester every year."

At town meeting last year, Bates presented voters with an option.

Stick with the same waste management plan, the tax rate will go up 94 cents.

Or, endorse pay as you throw, the tax rate will likely go down 10 cents.

Pay as you throw had failed twice in the town before
Last year , it squeaked through.

Now, Raymond residents need to buy town garbage bags if they want their trash picked up.

And they can get the bags for 2 dollars a piece at their local grocery store or town hall.

The idea behind pay as you throw is simple:

The more residents throw away, the more 2 dollar garbage bags they buy, the more they pay.

The less they throw away, and the more they recycle, the less they pay.

Rick Bates says the results of the program so far have been staggering.

Since June of last year, the recycling rate has shot up from 2 percent to 30 percent.

The town was throwing away 4400 tons of trash per year.

Bates predicts that number will plummet to 1700.

"Itâ€™s hard to say this program isnâ€™t working I donâ€™t know how anyone can say it doesnâ€™t work because our trash volume has dropped significantly, 60 percent is a huge number, our recycling rate is up in the mid 30s."

The revenue from the 2 dollar bags is covering all but 80,000 dollars of the townâ€™s total 600,000 dollar solid waste budgetâ€¦that means savings on the tax bill.

Despite the numbers, Rick Bates says heâ€™s dogged by questions from skeptics in town who wonder if they are really saving money.

And it's likely that not everyone is.

Someone buying a lot of 2 dollar garbage bags could end up paying more than they used to when their share of the cost was based solely on their property value.

Elizabeth Bedard says whatâ€™s important about the program is that people have a choice.

Bedard is the executive director of the Northeast Resources Recovery Association, a clearinghouse for waste reduction and recycling information.

"They control the costs, it isnâ€™t a willy nilly cost that gets thrown into their property taxes and they canâ€™t control at all, this is a control issue."

Bedard says this is often a difficult message to convey.

In the city of Manchester, pay as you throw has been proposed and rejected several times.

Alderman Armand Forest can remember voting against the idea 3 times in the last 4 Â½ years.

But Forest says he doesnâ€™t oppose the general idea.

He just thinks most Manchester residents are several years away from buying into the program which is also called bag and tag.

"I think because most people donâ€™t understand the bag and tag thing, there were a lot of complaints about it, people donâ€™t want to pay it, if we would have said yeah lets implement bag and tag, I think at this point we would have found more garbage on side of road and in others people yards, we donâ€™t want to go there now until people really understand it will work, but itâ€™s probably 5 or 10 years down the road."

That could be one reason why there are just 40 pay as you throw communities in the state.

Across the country, some 6000 communities have the program, including big cities like San Francisco and San Jose, California.

Dover is the largest pay as you throw community in New Hampshire.

They were also one of the first in the state.

Dover initiated the program in the early 1990s after their solid waste budget soared to 1.2 million dollars.

Since moving to pay as you throw, the average amount of trash per person has been reduced by 500 pounds per year.

The revenue the town makes from the $1.50 bag covers their total solid waste budget.

Dave Dinzeo is the chair of Doverâ€™s solid waste advisory commission.

He says pay as you throw has meant that waste management costs have remained nearly stable for residents for over a decade.

"Personally I am surprised that they donâ€™t do it in new Hampshire, thatâ€™s my personal opinion, I donâ€™t know what their situations are with wasteâ€¦itâ€™s been successful for us from the standpoint of improving efficiency of curbside collection, and helping the citizen recognize what being thrown away and how they can actually manage their tax base to some degree."

"It could be better, we need to see more disposal that way."

Thatâ€™s Don Maurer with the stateâ€™s department of environmental services.

Maurer says New Hampshire is going to have to think seriously about reducing trash volume,,,,and soon.

"Thereâ€™s a lot of issues going on in the state, one of which is capacity basically if we do nothing to permit new landfills or new incinerators by the year 2017 we will be out of capacity in the state, we will have no place to throw trash and then we will be in the same straights as new york city as an exporter to another state, thatâ€™s going to cost a lot of money."

And public sentiment against building new landfills or incinerators is strong and getting stronger.

That could lead to a growing interest in pay as you throw.

Elizabeth Bedard with the Northeast Resource Recovery Association says more voters are also likely to see pay as you throw coming up at town meetings.

"Towns are certainly more interested because we all look over neighbors fence and when we see that one town has found a successful way to reduce taxes, to increase recycling, to provide waste management in a more fair and equitable way, every year we see more towns putting this on their ballot."

Although residents approved it last year, one of those towns voting on pay as you throw this March will be Raymond.

And Town Manger Rick Bates will once again have to make his case...

This time, however, it may be easier.

For NHPR news, Iâ€™m RK.