Here in Japan, we pay for garbage bags. Burnable garbage gets collected twice a week in our town and unburnable garbage twice a month. Cans, bottles and PET bottles get collected twice a month as well, but on different days.
In my town, oversized garbage is collected on the same day and unburnable garage but you play a nominal amount for each piece. The oversized garbage has to be less than about 180 cm.
There are stations for cardboard, magazines and other paper related recycling. Certain electronics can be taken at some stations.
They have a center where you can take all the garbage you want and it’s reasonably priced.
I’m fixing up a house and I haul my trash there. It’s about US$30 for a small pickup truck’s worth.
And in fact, dumping stuff in landfills, especially paper stuff, is actually a good thing. That’s carbon sequestration, which we’ll need to be doing a lot more of if we’re to do anything about global warming.
We have weekly pickup of compost (food scraps, cat litter, etc.) in a city-provided wheelie bin. Garden waste, branches, etc. weekly except in winter (but they pick up Christmas trees for mulching a couple of times after Christmas). Regular garbage (up to 3 bins or other items), paper/cardboard (in a city-provided black bin), and glass/plastic/metal (in a city-provided blue bin) are collected on alternate weeks. There’s a list of items that can’t go in the garbage (hazardous waste, e-waste, etc.) but this can either be returned to the retailer or dropped off at special collection points set up every couple of months. Bulky items such as furniture will be picked up on regular garbage days, but you have to book the pickup ahead of time.
All covered by municipal taxes as a public health cost, except for the special bags ($4.40) if you want to put out more than 3 items in the regular garbage. Businesses generally need to make their own arrangements, but agricultural waste is collected at no extra cost (there are a significant number of farms inside the city limits). Much of this is covered by provincial law.
We just moved houses. I did not realize how much trash and recycling this generates.
I put the bins in the wrong places (they’re big) Taking out the bins this morning, I see that we put all our recycling in the trash bin, and all our trash in the recycling bin. :sigh: