What one town learned by charging residents for every bag of trash
When Plympton, Massachusetts faced a classic municipal headache—residents dumping so much trash they were bankrupting the town’s waste system—officials had to get creative. Instead of simply doubling fees and hitting everyone equally hard, they borrowed a page from economics textbooks and made people pay for exactly what they threw away. The results were immediate and dramatic: trash volume plummeted by nearly half, costs dropped significantly, and suddenly seniors weren’t subsidizing their neighbors’ wasteful habits. This small New England town’s experiment offers a compelling glimpse into how simple pricing changes can reshape behavior and solve budget problems simultaneously. Tik Root with Grist has the full story.
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