Even compared to Benton county the rates are low. Part of the reason that the rate is so low in Walla Walla is because land is available for a landfill. Also, if rates were high, households would begin dumping trash and old appliances in the woods and along the roadside more often. The cost of sending out a cleanup crew to the highways is, of course, high and would negate any positive effects of increasing landfill fees. As waste fees increase people will begin to think twice about how much trash they generate vs. the amount of recycling they pursue.
Recycling is very labor intensive and takes an extremely large amount of manpower.
Educating the younger generations is the best way to begin forming these new habits related to minimizing waste. The truck that hauls off your trash comes to the sanitary landfill and must be weighed on the scale pictured above. Then it travels up a dirt road toward the dumping pit. Then it backs to the edge of the dumping pit and dumps its load on the ground. Next, a compactor tractor moves the garbage down further into the pit where it is compacted and spread out and eventually buried with dirt.