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Comment by dvko | Hacker News Reader

Same thing in The Netherlands. Organic matter (brown or green bin) is free, but the bin that ends up on a landfill costs a few € to empty. I like it.

Also we have separate collections for glass, paper, plastic etc. So if you put in some effort, you can go a full year without having to empty your black (landfill) bin.

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This system of paying for the amount of trash you produce is not used in all of the Netherlands. Currently roughly 50% of all municipalities do this, with a trend towards broader adoption. The rest have a flat annual taxation based on the number of people in a household (trash is limited to whatever you can fit into the bin).

Separate collection for organic matter, paper, and plastic also differs from municipality to municipality. In mine organic matter and paper has its own bin, but we have no separate plastic bin, and glass goes in public glass recycling containers.

Wouldn't this just incentivize people to put things in the compost / recycling that don't belong there? I believe this is already a problem even in places that don't have such systems.

It does, but it would be a crime to do so and the garbage men actually check sometimes.

Having got offside with my bin man once , it’s completely not worth it. I put some concrete in my bin. The system he used to train me was a few weeks of lifting my bin up 4ish metres then dropping it on my front lawn. Removing broken window glass (which I was told must go in the bin, not the recycling) and household waste off my lawn each week was not worth it.

I don’t think this is the approved method for getting compliance, but it worked.

The Seattle method was to throw all of your random debris into the recycling bin at the end of your lease, because the trash cans are too small to hold anything. That way the next tenants get to deal with a recycling bin full of week-old rotting tilapia. Or maybe that was just us...

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