The composting firm Green Mountain Technologies has a site (OK, it’s an ad for themselves) listing what it says are average “tipping costs” – the cost to haul a ton of trash to a landfill – for every state.
The three highest averages, and the only ones over $100 a ton: Alaska, Maine and New Hampshire. Composting organics makes a lot of sense here. The site is here.
Lawmakers have been arguing a lot about landfills in New Hampshire due to attempts to expand one and questions about out-of-state trash coming here.
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Compost would help, (my head explodes when I see bags of leaves in the mixed trash bin), but it is only one arm of the problem.
Go to the grocery store. Stand at the end of the laundry aisle. Almost every one of those big plastic jugs is headed to the landfill in a few months (or weeks), and that aisle of plastic is continually restocked. It is just an example of how hard it would be now to try to put the brakes on our huge trash problem. (Tide still sells powdered detergent in cardboard boxes, which is what I buy and I wash the box and put it in the paper recycle bin).