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Comment by ElevenLathe | Hacker News Reader

Without any fee beyond the required annual solid waste bill, my municipality will let me set out up to 20 (!) bags of trash per week with up to 50 lb (!) in them every week. I can throw out two tons of trash per month without having to haul anything anywhere or pay any extra fees.

Clearly this is madness, but it does make it a lot easier to throw shit out than put it in a storage unit.

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Trust me, given how many people just accumulate trash because it's expensive, that's an absolutely sane and excellent policy. As a society, we want people to use trash disposal, because the alternative is expensive, painful, and disgusting.

You can literally tell which municipalities in my state have been hoodwinked by the Karens into adopting "pay as you throw". They're the ones where there's trash everywhere.

It's like these people can't think two steps ahead (I'd go so far as to say that's the defining feature of regulatory policy in this state). You just gave people a financial incentive to litter and dump.

Which state so I can avoid it?

Alaska was like this. Taking your trash to the transfer station or dump was expensive, so people throw it all over the place, trashing the highways and vacant land, or they use burn barrels and cause massive pollution torching plastic and other things. It's pretty horrifying to see such beautiful areas littered up :-(

Alaska has an excuse for it to be expensive. They're far away from everything.

Most of the US East coast has no such excuse.

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