New York Mulls New Trash Fee as Landfills Near Tipping Point

Waste haulers and some counties are already lining up to oppose the plan — and some waste experts don’t think it goes far enough.

In the published draft of a waste plan that the state is updating for the first time since 2010, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has called on the legislature and the governor to adopt a statewide fee on every ton of trash that doesn’t get recycled or composted. This surcharge is one of the plan’s three key recommendations, along with making companies reduce packaging waste and expanding food scrap recycling.

While some details remain hazy, in broad strokes, the DEC is proposing to charge major waste facilities for every ton of trash they process or ship out of state for disposal. Depending how the policy is implemented, that cost could potentially be passed down to consumers. Every year, the fee could raise and redistribute tens of millions of dollars for recycling, composting, and other waste reduction efforts, ideally while compelling residents to scale back what they throw out.

“Over 30 states already use some form of this successful fee structure,” the draft waste plan reads. “It is time for New York State to act.”

The urgency is clear. But the proposed fee is relatively modest. Though the draft waste plan does not recommend a specific surcharge, it says that even $5 per ton could be effective.

David Tonjes, a professor at Stony Brook University and a landfill expert, doubts it. At $5 a ton, the average household would owe less than $10 a year, even if the full cost were passed on to residents.

“People might grumble a little about having to pay it, but it likely would not serve as a disincentive,” Tonjes said.

Proponents of the surcharge say even small fees can go a long way, by putting the “polluter pays” principle to work.

“We would never imagine that we could use unlimited energy or water and pay the same utility fee,” said Brenda Platt, director of the compost program at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. So why do we treat trash that way?

More than 30 states already impose some type of fee on the disposal of solid waste. State-level fees, like the kind New York is considering, range from $0.50 to $13 per ton and are usually applied at major choke points for trash, like landfills, incinerators, and transfer stations. Waste haulers and municipalities may pass the costs on to local residents and businesses — though in some cases, the fees are low enough that residents may not even notice.

Wisconsin has by far the highest state surcharge in the country — $13 per ton since 2009. In the last 15 years, the amount of trash the average Wisconsinite sends to a landfill has declined more than a third, according to a New York Focus analysis of state data.

New York City’s Solid Waste Advisory Boards and a coalition of environmental groups are pushing for $15 a ton, increasing $2 every five years.

According to Tonjes, it’s a delicate balancing act. For a fee to meaningfully change behavior, it would need to be high enough for municipalities, businesses, and residents to feel it, but not so high that it increases illegal dumping and noncompliance.

“If the fee was too high, you might see an increase in illegal dumping, especially upstate and with construction and debris,” Tonjes said.

Even if new fees don’t change people’s habits on their own, they could raise revenue for other waste-reduction efforts — as other states have shown.

New Jersey redistributes its surcharge income to municipalities and counties for recycling and anti-waste efforts. Pennsylvania uses some of its revenue to fund water protection. Alameda County, California, has used steep disposal fees alongside a suite of other policies — including mandatory composting for businesses — to cut the amount of waste sent to landfill in half since 1995, even as the population has steadily grown.

Such fees are “a proven mechanism,” said Platt. “You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel.”

In New York, even an initial $5 surcharge could bring in over $130 million per year for recycling and waste efforts.

And it could nudge municipalities to create or step up their own volume-based waste collection programs. Many municipalities cart residents’ waste out for disposal themselves, rather than relying on private haulers, so the towns would have to pay the extra fee at the dump. They could try to cover the expense in their existing budgets — or they could implement a related approach known as “pay as you throw,” through which they’d charge residents based on the amount of garbage they put out.

This system brings the incentive to reduce waste down to the household, and it’s popular at the local level. According to economist Lisa Skumatz, nearly 9,000 municipalities and counties — covering 40 percent of the US population — have adopted pay as you throw policies since the early 1990s.

Those policies have succeeded in reducing waste, Skumatz has found, diverting 17 percent of trash that might have gone to landfills or incinerators. And some areas that already employ them have welcomed the proposed state surcharge.

Tompkins County, in comments to the DEC, said this “further financial incentive” could reinforce its pay as you throw system, which requires residents to buy tags for every bag of trash.

For now, pay as you throw is mostly limited to small towns in New York, but big cities have considered it. As early as 2015, New York City recommended putting a price on residential trash pickup and hired a consultant to study it in 2018 — then put the study on hold. The city now opposes the concept over concerns it would fuel illegal dumping, a fixation of the Eric Adams administration.

“We believe that charging for residential Sanitation services would not be the right approach, as it would lead to an increase in this crime, a theft of public space that disproportionality affects outer-borough and low-income neighborhoods,” said Department of Sanitation spokesperson Vincent Gragnani.

In Troy, “pay as you throw” nearly made it into the city budget in 2020 but was scrapped over concerns that it could increase costs to residents — especially low-income tenants — and lead to more illegal dumping. Albany hiked trash fees on businesses and apartment buildings in 2016, but long-standing proposals for a citywide fee remain in limbo.

Now, some of the backlash that has dogged “pay as you throw” locally could go statewide. Fulton County passed a resolution in May blasting the DEC proposal as an “unnecessary and unfair mandate” that would duplicate the county’s existing fees. Madison County passed a similar resolution in March. And New York’s main waste industry trade group has voiced similar concerns, calling the idea a “new tax on waste.”

Advocates counter that funding waste reduction efforts through dedicated fees could actually save residents money — rather than “burying” the costs in taxes.

“Local governments can’t really control their cost on garbage [when it’s] unlimited,” said Platt. “So we need that direct economic incentive at all levels.”