I am not familiar with the details within the City of Calgary, but I have worked with many municipalities with their solid waste programs. The vast majority of them do not charge enough in collection fees to pay for their operations and the shortfall ends up coming out of general revenues (i.e. property taxes). It is only recently that cities are mandated to account for the full life-cycle costs of their landfills, including closure costs, through accounting standards. So I highly doubt garbage is a profit marker for the City of Calgary as some in this thread state.
In an ideal world people would pay the life-cycle cost of items up front when they first purchase it and not be taxed at disposal. When you buy something, whether it be a fridge or a box of cereal, you pay the full cost to get rid of it when you are done up front. Then it doesn’t cost you anything when it’s time to get rid of it as that program has already been funded. This way you would see way less illegal dumping and it would encourage manufactures to develop more environmentally friendly products and packaging. Unfortunately that is difficult to do as it requires municipal/provincial/federal and even international cooperation.
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