Lexington has a waste problem. That is what a team of graduate students from Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning determined, working with the Town Sustainability department.
The town is currently trying to change their Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) collection system to reduce waste and save money. “Having a well thought plan of how to reduce our waste and how to pay for those services is not just a sustainability win but will also protect the Town financially,” said Maggie Peard, Lexington’s Sustainability and Resilience Officer, in a June 3 Select Board meeting.
In April, Tufts graduate students, Izzy Istephanous, Ryan Kadet, Terry Lee, and Camille Ross distributed a Zero Waste survey to Lexington residents and collected 1,514 responses. The survey asked about residents’ willingness to participate in trash metering, alternating week trash collection, curbside compost, and automated waste collection.
Trash metering, also known as Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT), is a system where residents pay a fee per unit for household trash disposal. Pre-printed trash bags or stickers are used in the majority of programs, and the price of the bag or sticker is the price to dispose of the waste. Residents are not directly charged for recycling.
“PAYT is one of the most effective ways to reduce trash that’s put out by households because people are more aware of their habits and they’re thinking about what they’re throwing away and making some kind of limit or incentive as a reason not to create excess waste,” said Maggie Peard in a separate interview. Additionally, there are many grants available for implementing PAYT.
Of the survey respondents, 54% supported trash metering and 46% were against it. The Tufts students then included this survey in a presentation to the Town on May 6th. The goal of this presentation was to assess possible changes to Lexington’s MSW collection system as part of the town’s Zero Waste Plan, a plan that was officially adopted by the Select Board in October 2023.
On June 3, the Select Board met to discuss various issues including the Zero Waste Strategies presentation. Members of the public pointed out that Lexington had tried implementing the PAYT method roughly 20 years ago and had been met with resistance. They explained that the Town was sued due to the Regulation of Refuse Disposal policy in the town bylaws, which states that the Town has to provide a suitable place or method for free public disposal.
Jill Hai, Vice Chair of the Select Board, addressed the PAYT method and these legal issues. “I think it is a conversation, but a much broader conversation, and I think it will have to go to a bylaw change,” she said. “We have to have that conversation with the community before we really go down the road here.”
Doug Lucente, Select Board Chair, thinks that the PAYT method is a “hard no.”
“We’re not all equal in what we’re producing, so we’re now being punitive against those that may have larger families or that may have financial hardships,” he said. While Joe Pato, Select Board Member, shared his concern, he felt that the PAYT method could be coupled with financial assistance. “One of the things we do know is that metered disposal actually does reduce the iteration of trash in households. So maybe this needs to be coupled with looking at some form of financial assistance for family size,” he said.
Laura Swain, a Town Meeting member, President of the Lexington Zero Waste Collaborative, and a former employee of the DEP, believes that the PAYT system is a very equitable Zero Waste method.
“One of the reasons why I personally really support a Pay-As-You-Throw program is because I actually think it is very equitable. There is a charge, but there’s also a charge for trash pickup. It’s just included in our taxes, and that means we’re not getting something else. When it’s included in our taxes, a small family, low income or not, is paying for the trash disposal of a very large family, low income or not,” she said.
Select Board members concluded that the Zero Waste strategies in the Tufts study — particularly the PAYT system — would have to be part of a much larger discussion. They are not ready to make any decisions at the moment, and there will have to be future meetings discussing this.
Right now the real estate taxes in Town include the trash collection fee, so when a few years ago Lexington has tried to implement “Pay-as-you-throw” program, it did not “fly”. The town has been successfully sued for double taxation as it refused to reduce the taxes. Is the town going to reduce taxes now, if the program is implemented?
Our family does what we can to reduce solid waste. We were early adopters of Black Earth Composting. We keep a separate trash bag for plastic that we bring to the recycling center at Market Basket. We segregate our office paper, newspaper, and cardboard when we put it out for collection. We now put out a relatively small bag of trash. For all that, with current town services, “zero waste” is tilting at windmills.
When we moved to Lexington, we wanted to be environmentally friendly, so we bought an electric lawnmower powered by a lithium-ion batter. After a few years, the battery died. Even though we could have purchased a new lawnmower for less money than the cost of replacing the battery, we chose replacement. Then that battery eventually died. Up until two weeks ago the lawnmower sat in our basement. That’s when we decided to disassemble it and recycle what we could.
We didn’t have the tools to do the job ourselves, so we hired an experienced handyman. It took him 90 minutes and cost us $150. (Is it reasonable to expect other Lexington residents to do the same?) We brought the battery and the scrap metal to Hartwell Avenue. We were still left with more than twenty pounds of hard plastic and the electric motor. From what we can tell, the only alternative for the hard plastic is to put it out for the regular trash pickup, where it will eventually end up in a landfill or an incinerator in or near one or more environmental justice communities. The motor contains metals that can be recycled for reuse in “green energy”, but there is no service available to disassemble the motor and in any event, no service that will ensure the metals would be reused.
In focusing on whether we should do “pay as you throw” or pay for trash removal out of the tax levy we are missing the point. Before we have that discussion, we have to have a solution for harvesting metals for green energy technologies and recycling hard plastic that is easy for the town comply with.