Over the Chirstmas holidays I bought a cell phone.
I have not had a cell phone in over five years. At the time I was in a contract, and I paid $60 a month. The thing is I never used the thing. I might have used it once or twice a month and I was getting dinged with a large bill every month.
This time I went the pay-as-you-go route. So far so good. If I use the phone a lot I pay for it. If I only use the phone a couple of times, then I only pay for a little bit.
Should it be this way for garbage? If you have a large family, or if you don
I currently live in Ottawa where the city provides garbage pickup services. It’s not bad and if you have an issue to resolve, they do their thing with little fuss. When I lived in California, garbage pickup was a separate bill and you actually could choose from different companies. I liked that there was none of this “every other week” recycling pickup: they picked up all 3 forms of recycling every week (not that you need pay-as-you-go for that, but if we are expected to go on contract, I would expect it). Also, when a truck ran over my recycling bins, they were immediately replaced with new ones that same day, no need to troop down to my local hardware store and argue for a replacement.
One other thing about the garbage/recycling service in California I found great was that within pretty much 5-10 miles of most people was located a recycling center where you could go and drop off garbage (at a cost) and also drop off large loads of recycling… FOR MONEY. On weekends, it was packed with people bringing cardboard, glass, steel, you name it. They paid by the pound for paper, plastic, metals, glass, etc. and for those who are resourceful, it probably augmented the income of people out of work. I witnessed this one little old lady driving up in a Datsun 510 station wagon CRAMMED to the gills with aluminum cans. Could be one of the reasons there was so little litter around there.