As costs to transport trash out of town rise, Deep River is considering a “pay-as-you-throw” program in an effort to reduce waste and avoid tax increases. Under a program proposed by the Sustainable Deep River Committee, residents who dispose of their trash at the town transfer station would be required to buy town-approved trash bags from local stores — $2 for a 33-gallon “family size” bag, $1.30 for a 13-gallon bag, and 95 cents for an 8 gallon bag. Recycling would continue to be free, and low-income residents could contact Town Hall about getting free bags.
Committee Chair Lenore Grunko said the pay-as-you-throw program would encourage residents to keep as much waste out of the trash as possible. “People would have to purchase bags, and then hopefully that’ll incentivize them to put as little as possible in them by recycling as much as possible,” Grunko said. “Paper, cardboard, food scraps, clothing, textiles and on and on.”
After the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority shut down its Hartford trash-burning plant last year, the state lost about a third of its capacity to handle trash within its own borders — about 740,000 tons per year. Now the state relies on landfills in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where hundreds of thousands of tons of trash are now being shipped.