Charge business and commercial waste by weight instead of by bin
Wastes from businesses and commercial enterprises are generally put into dumpsters that are removed on a regular basis. These wastes includes food waste from restaurants, grocery stores and markets as well as industrial wastes such as wood, metals, construction materials and so on. If businesses were incentives to reduce the WEIGHT of their wastes they would be much more likely to find creative ways to divert it from the landfill stream. So dumpsters with less 'garbage' in them simply cost less to the business.
randall.cook
shared this idea
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HelenS
commented
You're onto an important issue, Randall. Businesses and commercial enterprises produce 2/3 of the waste in our landfill. The commercial waste services industry is really hard to regulate. And it is still mired in old-fashioned notions of "efficiency" that save money up front to the hauler, but pass lon costs to all of us later on in wasted resources and pollution. Dumpsters also create a nuisance in our city's back alleys, which Vancouver's policing authority seems to be powerless to eliminate despite good effort. Vancouver's neighbourhood BIAs have been pushing for new approaches to waste collection that would replace dumpsters with separate collection of different materials. This is a good idea and needs to be supported.