A “pay-as-you-throw” fee based on the amount of trash residents discard and requiring deposits on cans and bottles are among the recommendations being advanced by an advisory team helping with County Executive Marc Elrich’s program priorities.
Elrich has already proposed sweeping environmental reforms, vowing to eliminate the county’s carbon emissions by 2035, and to close the county’s waste-to-energy trash incinerator facility in Dickerson.
Now his 200-plus member transition team, formed last fall after he was elected, wants him to implement additional reforms to reduce waste.
Among the policy ideas released Wednesday:
– A pay-as-you throw approach to structuring garbage fees based on the amount of materials discarded instead of a fixed garbage fee. A sliding-scale fee system could be accomplished in a number of ways, such as requiring customers to buy stickers to place on each container of trash.
– A beverage container deposit program, in which customers pay a deposit for each bottle or can purchased, and then would receive a refund for returning the container. Ten states have a container deposit program, and most began in the 1970s and 1980s.
– Allowing recycling and solid waste workers to unionize in the same way county employees and public safety officials do. The county partners with private contractors for workers, and many are already members of the Laborers International Union of North America, or LIUNA. That union heavily supported Elrich during the campaign.
Adam Ortiz, Elrich’s new environmental department director, was hesitant to address specific policy proposals, but said the pay-as-you-throw idea as something the county “is looking at.”
“What’s attractive about it is it scales the actual cost to the amount of stuff that people trash. There’s some challenges with implementation, but it’s something we’re looking into,” he said. “It’s certainly not impossible, but it would have to be thought through and resourced carefully.”
Many of Elrich’s ideas come with a cost, as in the case of closing the incinerator, which former County Executive Isiah Leggett estimated would add an additional $18 million to the annual operating budget.
With the county failing to meet a goal of recycling 70 percent of its trash by 2020, Ortiz said the county is looking at solutions through “three filers:” practicality, cost and per-dollar return on investment.
Ortiz said the county is “expecting 2020 results based on a 1990s model” of recycling, meaning that the county will only increase recycling by reducing trash output, which it can do with better infrastructure.
“More than a third of what’s going to the incinerator now is organic food material, and with the right systems, we can create a premium compost product and sell it,” he said.
Caren Madsen, a Silver Spring business consultant, former EPA employee and member of the transition team’s environmental task force, said she was unsure of how the container deposit program would resonate with businesses, noting that they were resistant to the 5-cent bag tax the county implemented in 2011.
“It just depends on how it was implemented. The businesses are probably going to balk at something like that,” she said.
Madsen said she supported the unionization suggestion, and that the contract workers deserve protections.
“I don’t like the continued allegations that the county executive is too close to the unions. I think someone who has fought for the working poor in Montgomery County, to try to paint them with a broad brush, is wrong,” she said.
Madsen added that the transition team plans to “not give Elrich a pass” when it comes to making sure their environmental wishes are turned into policies.
“We’re going to come back to him and say, ‘this was what’s in the transition report, we all invested a lot of time in this, where’s the action?’ We’re going to come back and say, ‘OK, here’s what we recommended. Where are we?” she said.
The transition team, headed by Chief Administrative Officer Andrew Kleine, was asked to come up with specific policy proposals in seven priority areas that Elrich had outlined in his campaign.
A 25-member task force that was part of the “greener county” priority area came up with the trash fee, bottle deposit and unionization suggestions.
While an introduction statement stresses the reports are “a starting point,” they provide greater details into the philosophies and approaches Elrich’s administration is expected to pursue over the next four years. They are also expected to raise questions about their costs and practical implementation.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media
