We all agree that encouraging the cost-effective recycling of household and municipal waste is in the best interest of the town and its environment. The question is, how do we best accomplish it?

One option is Pay As You Throw (PAYT). The town of Woolwich tried that program last year and, after a few months experience, its residents resoundingly threw it out during the November elections.

Why was it so unpopular?

• Because it replaced an existing town service funded by property tax revenues with a special new tax on the disposal of household waste. No longer a service provided to households regardless of their ability to pay, this new tax played favorites. The wealthiest property owners stood to see their property taxes decline by several hundred dollars a year while struggling young families with kids in modest homes paid more.

• Because it was inconvenient. Through years of education, most Woolwich residents had come to recognize the value of recycling and were doing so. They were already putting their household non-recyclables at curbside in convenient inexpensive containers. PAYT required adapting to a new system, compressing the same volume of trash into expensive smaller bags. For many, PAYT was an unwelcome extra step for them to conscientiously dispose of the same volume of trash.

• Because it encouraged improper disposal of waste. Trash shifting became rampant. Rather than pay the special new tax, many residents deferred. Household trash was known to be carted off to BIW by Woolwich residents who worked there, found placed in the dumpsters of others, seen crammed into small trash cans between pumps at gas stations, burned in wood stoves or in illegal backyard incinerators, dumped on land of others or just plain hoarded. This trash shifting was significant. It is responsible for most of the difference in total tonnage figures (trash plus recyclables) in PAYT and non-PAYT months.

• Because it was not a comprehensive solution to Woolwich’s solid waste problem. it was tinkering around the edges, scraping up a little more recycling at a time when recycling markets were largely saturated. It did not provide residents with an in town option to dispose of anything other than household trash and recyclables. It did not address the composting of food waste, one of the most significant contributors to the waste stream. It did not provide a town transfer station for residents to take their carpentry project debris or other non-recyclables, or drop off a perfectly good but unwanted bicycle free that could be used by another kid.

• And because it introduced the overhead of another cost component into the trash disposal system, that of Waste Zero, a supposedly non-profit organization that turned out to be a profitable PAYT bag manufacturer. Now an independent cost analysis by the Public Health Research Institute, a federal non-profit [501 (c) (3)] corporation reveals that, despite claims of cost savings that resulted from reduced tipping fees during the five months period that PAYT operated, when the cost of bags and town overhead are included the overall costs to Woolwich residents for PAYT actually increased by an estimated $26,542.

We need to task our Solid Waste and Recycling Committee with coming up with more acceptable options for proper the disposal of solid waste by Woolwich residents.

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Don Adams lives in Woolwich.