Trash in the time of COVID-19

The City of Burlington does not have trash collection as a service**, ***.  Citizens either contract with a private hauler or haul it themselves.  

I've been hauling trash to the Pine St drop-off for nearly 16 years.  Unfortunately, it's currently closed due to the pandemic, so today I hauled to the Milton drop-off.  This adds a good 40 minutes to the time to haul, and isn't easily combined with a post-haul trip to the grocery store.  So if the Pine St drop-off doesn't reopen, then consolidated collection starts to look better.

The Pine St drop-off is also the only facility in CSWD that weighs your trash, so I have 16 years of collected data on each haul.  For today's haul to Milton, I used our postal scale to measure its total weight of 48lbs spread across two 45-gallon bags and two 45-gallon trash cans.  CSWD is currently charging $10 for four 45-gallon containers, which is almost exactly what it would cost to haul 48lbs at $0.21/lb to Pine St.  So yay for that! but I still hope Pine St reopens within the next few months.

** Yet.  Burlington is considering consolidated collection.  While I support the general idea of reducing environmental impacts through consolidated collection, it is likely to be far more expensive for no added benefit:

• Cost.  We currently haul about 200lbs/yr of trash.  This means that, at the current prices, we are averaging about $40/yr on trash.  That's about the monthly cost for some private haulers.
• Other materials.  I'm glad to see that compost is covered under the proposed plan, but we also sort and haul batteries, books, scrap metal, used clothes and electronics.  If we will need to continue to haul these, that will negate savings we might have seen from not having to spend the time & gas to haul our own trash.

*** This gave rise to a now-amusing anecdote because when we moved to Burlington from out of state, we engaged the services of a buyer broker.  Because they lived in a condominium complex where the association negotiated with a trash hauler, he was unaware until we told him that the City didn't do trash collection.