I have a one acre parcel in a rural Arizona town (pop. 1,700) where garbage service is $24/month, every Tuesday.?ÿ But they only service parcels on County roads and I'm a quarter mile from the road on a rough gravel driveway, like a lot of my neighbors.?ÿ Not gonna lug the wheeled trash can two miles a month.?ÿ There's also a Waste Transfer Station 2 miles away that's $7.00 per pickup load with surcharges for mattresses, tires, (small domestic animals are 5.00 each) et. al.?ÿ It's a sad place, only open two days a week with a gal in a shack collecting the money.?ÿ You throw your Waste over a low wall into an open parked semitrailer in a trench.?ÿ So my protocol was to fill five 65 gallon trash cans which is a pickup load every three or six weeks to the transfer station.?ÿ Do the math.
It's a low income community so it's a public health mess.?ÿ Folks that are strapped financially illegally burn as much garbage as they can without permits?ÿ (including plastic, small animals, construction debris) which is stinky on calm days. They dump larger items like appliances, furniture, wrecked trailers on abandoned overgrown properties or anywhere there's unmonitored public property like hidden highway R/W or public lands, or just eject it on the side of the road.?ÿ Some pile their unburnable junk in the back or front yard.?ÿ My neighbor to the south has fifteen abandoned cars up against my fence, which is unsightly (though apparently legal) although a family of roadrunners has moved into a '49 pickup cab with broken windows which amuses me.
Where I live now residential garbage pickup is?ÿ free (for the last 90 years) if you use approved curbside wheeled trash cans.?ÿ It impressively reduces the amount of trash in the community.?ÿ The City has tried to implement a fee based system dozens of times over the decades but because it's part of the City Charter (1919) has to be overcome by a referendum so has always failed.?ÿ The City points out it's not actually free and general tax funds which cover it (50 million/yr) could be used elsewhere if a fee for service structure was implemented.?ÿ I ask whether the public health issue of free disposal of househould garbage is a worthy goal.
Our County precincts offer a trash bin at their equipment yard and charge $1 per trash bag and you take it there anytime between 8am and 4pm Monday thru Thursday, except observed holidays.
One precinct has locations and prices for dumping items other than regular household trash.
Tires are still something that is very expensive to get rid of apart from putting on a stump or in a giant brush fire on a very cloudy and dark day.?ÿ
