Pay-as-you-throw: How one small town in Massachusetts eliminated half of their residents' waste

WBUR | By Here & Now Newsroom

Published July 2, 2025 at 12:01 PM EDT

Up until a few years ago, the municipal transfer station in Plympton, Massachusetts, had a problem: The residents of the small town were producing so much trash that it was bankrupting the local municipal transfer station.

As a solution, the town started charging residents to pay for each bag they toss, which succeeded in slashing Plympton’s waste output nearly in half.

Here & Now‘s Scott Tong speaks with Tik Root, senior staff writer with our editorial partners at Grist, about the success of this new program and how it might be applied elsewhere.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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