We’ve saved quite a bit of money by scaling back our garbage service. We opted to only have a trash pickup every other week, and we forgo the yard waste bin. We rarely have trouble fitting our trash for two weeks in our bin, even when our family of five has included two in diapers. We only generate a small amount of yard waste, and we either compost it or put it in our trash bin. In our area, those two changes save us $120 a year! -Ashley
Reader Interactions
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Lisa says
Add me to one who wants to know where the bins came from! We have to pay for private curbside trash pick-up or we pay for bags from the town.
I’d love to find a better system for recycling. We have a small shed but no garage.
Lisa Titus says
Add me to one who wants to know where the bins came from! We have to pay for private curbside trash pick-up or we pay for bags from the town.
I’d love to find a better system for recycling. We have a small shed but no garage.
CJ says
I wish I could reduce my trash service as I only put out 1-2 bags a week and my recycling bin 1-2 times a month. But my city charges each household $17 a month no matter how little or much you put out and that doesnt include yard waste or large items.
sheri says
I have never paid for trash pick up or curbside recycling. I’m assuming that this depends on what state everyone lives in? I know alot of communities with home owners associations have this which i have never been a part of.
Katie says
We save $21/month ($252/year) by having no trash pick-up! We just moved to a small rural town with no restrictions, so my husband burns our trash in a barrel at the back of our property. Any glass or metal waste that won’t burn goes to my parents’ house, where they do have trash pick-up. It has been so nice to have the extra $250, and I don’t have to have stinky garbage sitting in my garage for a week!
Kadee says
Wow, I’m jealous of those of you who can take your recycling/trash somewhere for free! I’d gladly do that if it were available. The closest “free” place to take our recycling is an hour away. The dump is also at least that far. I can’t stand to have the stuff in our garage long enough to make a trip worthwhile! We pay $16/month for trash, $6/month for recycling. Four companies serve our neighborhood, and these are the cheapest rates of the four. We have weekly pickup, and there is not an option for less frequently, or I’d take it. Yard waste is composted or burned, so we don’t pay for that.
sarah says
I save $360 / year ($30 each month for trash pick up) by taking mine to the dump instead of hiring it out. I compost and recycle a lot.
Patrice says
I’m wondering where thos bins came from too… love em! Our little town only has the option of a weekly pick up and we are charged for it whether we use it or not, but I would like to be better about recycling. Just need to get a good “system” in place.
Tammy says
Straight from out town website:On June 17, 2008, the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners voted to add four cents to the property tax rate for the purpose of replacing the monthly residential garbage and recycling fee. Beginning in July 2008, the Town of Wake Forest began treating residential garbage and recycling service the same as fire and police service as part of your annual property tax bill. (North Carolina)
We have one trash and one recycling container.
Kathryn says
Really interesting, there are no trash options in our city (or any city I’ve lived in!) it doesn’t matter how much you use, and there’s no way to “opt out” if you live here you pay for trash pick up.
Stacy says
This is what I was thinking too. We live in Phoenix and I’ve never heard of most of these options. Trash pickup is a city function that just gets added to our water bill every month. A quick look at our city website tells me that it costs $16/month for trash and recycling pickup. Oh, and if we don’t recycle they add another $13/month to that amount. I don’t see any option for pickup every other week or anything like that.
Emily says
We rent a small condo and garbage pickup is free! Our building has a dumpster outside, which is great. We take our recycling to the township garage, also free.
Ann says
I also cut out trash pickup recently. Money can be up and down in our freelance life and now is one of those times. I also realized how much we were wasting on it since there’s just the 2 of us now and we compost a lot. I’m actually looking forward to going to the dump, which I liked doing as a kid! I live in a cold climate and think I’ll just leave the trash and recyclables in the unheated room under the garage, which is cool as a root cellar.
Angie says
Call your waste company and ask for a reduced rate. We did when a new company came to our small town and our current company reduced our rate by $120 per year.
Shannon says
Great idea! I love those recycle bins.
Where did you find those?
Mary says
In our city, recycling pickup is free and you can either pay monthly or by the bag for trash. It really encourages us to recycle as much as possible! We have 2 in diapers, plus 2 more kids, but we only put out about 3 bags of trash per month – at $1.10 per bag. One thing I find really helpful is to put as little food waste in the garbage as I can. I put most of it in the garbage disposal now, but we’re saving for a compost bin.
Jamie says
Our garbage service is $84/quarter or nothing. For that $84 you can put out 6 cans a week. We never have that much. I noticed that our neighbors, a family of 4 with a SAHM just like us, were routinely putting out 4 cans. Now we pay a portion of their bill to be able to put ours out with theirs. The only downside is carrying it up the street when the weather is bad, but for the amount we save it is worth it. Of course you would want to be sure this is acceptable where you live before you do it, but in our case it helps 2 families with their bills.
Chelsea says
Great idea!
Willy says
I’d be careful, it may be illegal to do this, and if you get caught they may charge you for every month you didn’t pay them…
Just like it’s illegal to ‘use’ your neighbor’s cable at your house.
Jamie says
Yes, that is why I put the disclaimer in there about checking first to be sure it’s okay where you live. Our service is through a private company and they do not care. I would imagine this might not work if your city or township contracts a provider to do it.
Candice says
We did something similar. When we bought our home, the previous owners had two trash dumpsters. We never used the second one & I finally realized we were being charged $5/month for the second dumpster. We called the city & had them pick it up which saves us approximately $60 per year.
Reesa says
We haven’t paid for trash service since January 2010 I think. We have creative ways of storing our trash until we can deal with it. We don’t have the option for bi-weekly service. For us, it is $240/year or nothing. We choose nothing! I’ve been tweaking our system and feel I finally have a good thing going that should be easy for anyone to follow.
Here are our basics:
1) Don’t bring it in to begin with. This is by far the best way to reduce your waste.
2) Think about the items you are purchasing and what they come in. If you have two options, and one is recyclable and within a reasonable price point, choose that option over the one that will head to the landfill.
3) Recycle everything possible. Remember though that the things you recycle are also waste and you have to have a system to deal with those items until you can drop them off.
4) Compost. We are about to start composting here (moved this summer). I am looking at composting bins now that will work in our neighborhood.
5) Have a way to store everything else. I have a special box in the freezer for food items I can’t compost or put down the drain – like bones. We use cloth diapers so that alone reduces a ton of landfill waste.
I do have a blog series coming soon about how we make this work in more detail (and where we take all our waste when our bins here are full). I am terrible about starting a series on my blog and not finishing it so it won’t post until we buy the compost bin. That way I know everything is in place for timely posts :).
Megan says
We save $240/year by doing our own trash and recycling. The center our county provides for **FREE** recycling and trash/yard waste is about a mile from our house. My husband takes the garbage about once a week to ten days and I typically take all the recycling that we have sorted in bins in the garage. When our salary got cut substantially, this was the first to go since we had a good free option so close. Our salary has since been restored but we still recycle what we can then trash the rest ourselves.
Janet says
This is a great idea, we have been doing so many things we combined our two storage units into one, which saves us $200 per year we are turning off all our phatom electric off each time we are not using something we make certain it is not plugged in so many things use so much electric. We are saving over $30 a month doing this. I make my own baby wipes and we eat only what is on sale and what we can buy with coupons. We are saving for a house. I blog and do odd jobs to try to help save.
I like the trash pick up idea but we are in a small apartment right now so I can’t save but we do reduce our trash and by doing so we save money just by learning ways to reuse what we have already purchased. Last week I reused all the cereal lines on my freezer cooking day. (These are the same as wax paper)
Stop by sometime glossy money and see if you can add some tips or pick up a few. I combine time saving with money saving as a large family and someone who works outside the home I feel I must have exceptional time management and home making skills all at the same time.
Tracy says
Wow, I would like to have those colorful recycling bins! We have 3 people in our family, and I don’t think we could forgo trash pick up every week. We do recycle, which helps. We do mulch grass and leaves, and take advantage of the free yard waste pick ups twice a year. Our trash service is really cheap – $11 a month. At least I think it is – not sure what it is anywhere else?
Willing Cook says
We save on trash pick-up too, but in a rather unconventional way. We own my husband’s office building in a part of town that includes garbage pick-up in the property tax. Instead of paying an additional garbage fee at our home (not included in taxes), we take our trash to his office every week. I always think the neighbors must wonder why we never have trash at our curb…where do they stash it? We’re just happy to save the money!
Megan says
We save at least $240 per year not even having trash service. Although I know this is not a viable option for most people. It works for us because 1-Our local Convenience Center (what my county calls the **free** place where we take our trash/recycling) is literally a mile away with no traffic and 2-My husband has a truck.
About once a week or even once every two weeks depending on how full the trash can is, he loads up his truck bed and takes our trash. We recycle so much–plastic, glass, metal, paper, cardboard, batteries, electronics, paint, light bulbs, etc and have bins in our garage to separate it all—that our actual “trash” is minimal. I often take our recycling myself in the bins in the back of my van because most of the time it doesn’t stink like the garbage does.
Another recycling option for those who don’t have the awesome center we have is Target has recycling bins. Ours happen to be by the exit doors…they take plastic bags, plastic, glass, paper, small electronics, etc.
Carollynn says
I was just about to post the same comment! This is exactly what we do!!! LOL!
Jessica says
In my city, yard waste pickup is free but you must either put it in those large brown bags (which run about $.50-.75 apiece) or in a dedicated plastic container that never holds trash. The containers/bags must weigh under 50#. Or, you can haul your yardwaste to specified locations and it is turned into mulch which you can take as much as you want for free.
On the other hand, our city charges for curbside recycling. You can take your recycling to public drop off locations at no cost though, so we usually do that. We can go for a month before having our trash bin picked up, simply by recycling and composting. This doesn’t save money though because our garbage rate is minimal and included in our water bill.