> people not feeling the cost of waste disposal due to free trash pickup
Are you claiming that the price/ton at the landfill is subsidized? That the environmental fees are less than they ought to be, given the externalities of the landfill, or the long-term costs of burying large amounts of soon-to-be-scarce resources? Or that the effect of rolling the monthly or quarterly payment into an HOA fee, an apartment rental, or city taxes takes the option away from the homeowner?
In my rural community, my neighbors and I pay $40 quarterly for weekly pickup of a 96-gallon rolling trash bin. As far as I know, this service is unsubsidized by the government. As the pickup is performed in less than a minute per house by a hydraulic arm and an old but dependable garbage truck, it seems reasonable that the approximate $3 per trip, multiplied by the approximately 500 homes on their run, would cover the labor, fuel, maintenance, and eventual replacement of the trucks. Plus, of course, dump fees: the consumer rate is $30 per ton plus $2 in environmental fees for our local landfill. $30 seems reasonable, they need to cap and manage the landfill, and the land area is expensive, but a 100-foot-high by 80-acre hill can hold a lot of garbage. It just doesn't cost that much.
Honestly, I don't really even feel the $40 cost. It's one of the smaller bills of being a homeowner. I do wish that I could pay $20 quarterly for 96 gallon pickup every two weeks, or for 48 gallon pickup weekly, because I just don't generate that much trash. But it's not even close to being expensive enough or even a savings to drive to the landfill myself.
It's a flat fee per house, which I agree is unfortunate, but picking up the same sized cart everywhere weekly is just a lot simpler than charging by weight or scheduling pickups on an as-needed basis. But even if it was metered, it's not an expensive enough process to make the average homeowner think twice about it - much like I'll carefully manage my air conditioner in summer, and tolerate a bit higher temperatures because that electric bill bites, while I don't worry about leaving LEDs on or running my natural gas furnace a little warmer in winter because they're too cheap to matter.
Perhaps a billing system with a price per pickup plus a rate per ton, coupled with a smart scale in or outside every garage that measured the weight of your trash can and displayed the cost of the disposal with a button to switch off pickup if you didn't need it (verified against a load cell on the hydraulic arm of the garbage truck) could be an effective and environmental business practice.