Taxes

Tax time got me thinking last month. Why is it that I pay the same amount for property taxes as people who are wasteful with our resources? Shouldn’t there be some sort of program where you can get tax reductions for using a rain barrel or composting? I pay the same for garbage pickup as everyone else and yet generate way less because we compost in our backyard. We don’t even have enough to put out the trash every week.

Paying per bag of garbage would never work because people would just dump their garbage elsewhere. But if those who found eco alternatives to putting everything in the landfill (and using city services to do so) could get a tax reduction I think more people would start backyard composting or vermicomposting.

Hire some co-op students to do random audits. I would more than welcome showing them what we are doing in order to get the tax break. If enough people get on board maybe they wouldn’t need to do weekly garbage pickup but rather bi-weekly. This would also reduce the overall emissions from the garbage trucks.

I know this is a pie in the sky idea and would probably never work in the real world but I think something like this could be effective in getting more people to look at ways to reduce their consumption and their waste. For some people money does talk.