No. 145: Pay As You Throw

Greg Rancourt -

Where I come from, I'm used to a flat fee for waste management – I throw away whatever I want, and I pay the same amount no matter how much trash I kick to the curb. This week, we're taking a look at a different waste management model called pay-as-you-throw which charges for every bag of trash you throw away.

One Massachusetts city managed to save money and greatly reduce the amount of waste produced. It wasn't just a municipal savings though – a family throwing away one small bag of trash each week saved around $100 per year after the waste management approach changed. It's pretty cool stuff, and I'd love to see it adopted more broadly.

I'm also sharing a role at an EdTech stalwart this week with excellent benefits and location flexibility, and if you are itching for a humanitarian role for your next career, I have a UN-affiliated job board that is bound to be up your alley. Off we go!

~ Greg

What we're reading

A small Massachusetts town discovered that charging residents per bag of trash, rather than a flat annual fee, cut their waste disposal in half and saved them $65,000 annually. (Grist)

  • Plymton's old system charged residents $240 per year for unlimited dump access, but disposal costs were nearly double what the town collected. The town thought about increasing the annual fee but turned instead to a "pay-as-you-throw" model, which is used in nearly half of Massachusetts municipalities.
    • Under the new model, residents pay $65 per year and dispose of their waste in bags that cost $1.25 for a small bag and $2.50 for a large one.
    • Oddly enough, a household paying for one small bag per week now spends $130 per year on waste management, well below what they had been paying before. Paying by the bag, it turns out, makes people more conscious of how much they throw away.
  • The waste reduction was dramatic: residents threw away 640 tons of waste in 2022 before the new system went in place, and they threw away just 335 tons the following year.
    • The town saved $65,000 per year with the new structure, but part of why I love this model are the secondary effects: residents started recycling more, for example, because more recycling meant lower waste management costs.
    • As I've gotten older, I've become more attuned to the upstream and downstream impacts on my consumption choices. Those reflexes are learned – in lieu of people learning about the environmental impacts, a financial incentive acts like a proxy and delivers the same outcome: lower consumption and less waste.
  • Up to this point, I've been primarily focused on the financial costs, not the environmental costs. The latter were much improved as well: a study in Massachusetts found that their pay-as-you-throw municipalities reduced their waste by about one-third, and similar research in New Hampshire found some municipalities reduced waste by more than 50%.
    • That's seriously impressive environmental impact, and the city isn't even the one paying for it. Sounds like my kind of return on investment.
    • Would you like to see a pay-as-you-throw model in your own city? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Job of the week

Online education and nonprofit work collide in this week's featured role at Khan Academy, one of the pioneers of making a good education accessible for people around the world. I've been inspired by their mission for a while, and their job opportunities are genuinely competitive with typical tech company salaries. I recommend taking a look if you'd like to transition to a social impact career but are worried about whether you have to take a step back to do so – not so here.

Among their current opportunities: marketing, product, and operations roles, all of which are remote-friendly or offered at their Mountain View, CA site. If teaching is more your thing, they have contract roles in specific subject areas. I've seen job opportunities rotate out regularly, so if the mission resonates but the current opportunities aren't a good fit, keep this careers page bookmarked in your browser.

Community roundup

  • The FDA has approved an HIV injection called lenacapavir to be taken twice a year as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP. This is a major breakthrough compared to existing solutions like pills, but it comes at a cost of nearly $30k per dose. (NYT)
  • Major banks have invested nearly 25% more money into fossil fuel projects since 2023, and four of the top five biggest investors were based in the U.S. (Grist)
  • All 50 states have reached a combined $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma over its role in the opioid crisis. The money from the settlement will go towards fighting the impacts, such as opioid treatment, prevention, and recovery programs. (ABC News)
    • Previously, the groups had reached a $6 billion settlement that was overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
  • The New York Restoration Project is working to bring back the American chestnut tree in the Northeast after a blight wiped out 4 billion trees last century. The group is offering 400 blight-resistant saplings to New Yorkers to plant around the city, and the demand has exceeded supply – sounds like a good problem to me. (The Guardian)
    • We have a tendency to focus on wildlife conservation, but this is a great example of plants getting the conservation treatment. At their peak, these trees were enormous: about 100 feet tall and 8 feet wide. Imagine 4 billion of them, and it's easy to imagine what was lost and what we stand to gain if this project is successful.
  • Norway is on track to end the sale of gasoline-powered cars by the end of this year. Last year, 90% of all vehicles sold in the country were electric. (Undark)
    • For comparison, around 10% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. last year were electric, and in California – the epicenter of EV adoption in the U.S. – rates were still only 25%.
    • Two things stand out to me as to why adoption rates are so high in a country that is so cold and a major producer of fossil fuels: they've put a bunch of financial incentives in place, like removing the sales tax on EV purchases and applying subsidies from the taxes on fossil fuels, as well as robust EV charging infrastructure, where Norway has more charging stations per vehicle than any country in the world.

Civic corner

  • The Secretary of Agriculture announced that the government would roll back the "roadless rule" that prevented mining, logging, and road construction in 58 million acres of American back country. (NYT)
    • This is not the first time these protections have been rolled back. The Trump administration did so in 2020, and they were restored under the Biden administration.
    • As with many of our other regulatory topics, one thing I'm looking for is whether commercial companies take advantage of the changes or stay the course – will they invest in areas where they may lose access under a different administration?
  • As nuclear power sees a resurgence of interest, the Trump administration has issued a series of executive orders to revisit nuclear reprocessing and recycling capabilities. (Bloomberg Law)
    • The Department of Energy has been asked to deliver a report within 8 months that covers how to manage nuclear waste and possibly reuse it. We used to have reprocessing and recycling capabilities around 60 years ago, but they were largely abandoned in the 1980s.
    • Reprocessing takes spent uranium and turns it into new plutonium fuel and waste material that can't be reused. Part of the reason this was abandoned was because of our nonproliferation stance: plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons.
  • The Senate is working on revisions to the budget bill working its way through Congress, and one of the topics they are considering is how much to roll back clean and renewable energy incentives. This week, Senator Kevin Cramer on the Senate Energy Committee said that they are adjusting language for rooftop solar credits after they were removed in the original version. (Reuters)
  • While we're on the topic of budget reconciliation: Senator Mike Lee's proposed amendment to make 250 million acres of public land eligible for sale was ruled out by the Senate parliamentarian and now requires 60 votes to stay in the bill, which is unlikely. (Inside Climate News)
    • Could we see this sneak in under another bill? That seems to be the strategy here – although given the public loves our public lands, it seems like a gamble.
  • Countries gather between the climate COPs – Azerbaijan in 2024, and Brazil this year – for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is the foundation for other climate-related institutions and agreements. The U.S. federal government has chosen not to participate in this year's talks, but various nonprofits, universities, and municipal leaders have elected to attend to advance climate progress. (Inside Climate News)

Hot job opportunities

Resource of the week

I have a new job board to share with you this week, and this time the focus is on humanitarian jobs. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs collects, tags, and disseminates information to support humanitarian efforts, and they have a job board as well.

The website is called ReliefWeb, and the main service reads like a series of news articles, blog posts, and press releases from humanitarian organizations from around the world. Those organizations post opportunities on the ReliefWeb job board, and I found around 100 openings with the International Rescue Committee, Carter Center, and American Red Cross, among others. Take a look if you are considering a role at a nonprofit with global reach.

Test your knowledge

With Pell Grants under evaluation as part of the budget reconciliation process, I thought it was worth reviewing how they got their start.

Pell Grants are named after Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell who successfully advocated for the program as part of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Grants were originally called Basic Educational Opportunity Grants but were renamed in 1980 to honor Pell. Today, roughly one-third of students receive some kind of support from Pell Grants, making it all the more important to preserve the program – it's a key financial lifeline for college-seeking students.

The form of renewable energy in this week's question is getting more popular in certain states. Do you know what it is?

What is the term for generating energy from the Earth’s heat?

Email me your guess, and I'll send one lucky winner a couple of One Work stickers!

I saw a lot of art and history on my trip to San Francisco, to the point where I was overwhelmed by much of what I saw in the context of our current challenges. SF MoMA has a remarkable collection of post-WWII art that dwarfed me with its scale and imagery, and I was inspired by the people featured at the GLBT Historical Society in the Castro District.

I think part of why I found both locations so poignant was because I have the context – this is recent history within which you can contextualize the pieces on display, and it's easy to put yourself in their shoes. It reminds you that as much as things are different now, people have struggled with the same conflicts for decades, much less centuries. I'd recommend a visit if you find yourself in San Francisco in the future.