creative but legal alternatives

[irmanator]

I found out today that if you take your stuff to the dump- which is practically in my neighborhood- it is only .10 lb opposed to 30/ month.
So I am gonna give this a try for a couple months to see if it is easier/cheaper. I would be recycling or reusing anything i could. composting and donating other stuff. I have not done a great job of this before because when garbage removal cost the same no matter what there is no incentive to do anything else.

How have you reused/repurposed things to avoid throwing them away?

[jeffrey]

Don't forget to calculate the cost of driving the stuff (gas, wear and tear on the car, etc) to the dump - shouldn't be a problem if it is near, but could be costly if it is a lengthy trip.

[swanson719]

10 cents a pound adds up too. You'd only need 300lbs of trash to make it worth it to keep the garbage man. Some months you might spend more, especially if you bag your mulch/leaves etc. Over the year, it will probably be cheaper.

[Daylily]

Fortunately our garbage collection also includes pick-up of recyclables. However we can't put paper or cardboard in that so every couple of months we drive to the recycle center to drop off mixed paper and cardboard.

Composting ALL of our vegetable scraps and coffee filters significantly reduces the weight of our garbage. I'm lucky that I live outside of the city limits so I can just dump all my veg scraps in a pile near the ditch.

I buy in bulk whenever possible to reduce packaging. Some of my food purchases are also done at a co-op where I use the self-serve bins and fill my own containers - again no packaging!

[Daylily]

For comparison the price at my local landfill is:
$3 for any garbage load less than 140 pounds; approx. $.50 for each additional 20 lb. over 140 pounds. Charge per ton: $38.50.

Depending on what you are throwing away, could any of it be donated to Goodwill, Salvation Army. What about using Freecycle or Craigslist. This is assuming that you have heavy items that you don't want to pay for the disposal but are also items that could be reused by someone else.

What about salvage shops? We have Habitat for Humanity Restore stores in our area that accept items.

[FrugalIII]

Where I live, we have to pay for municipal trash collection whether we have any trash or not. So taking mine to the dump would not be of any value to me. Otherwise I certainly would give it a try.