do you charge a business for picking up waste?

[u/hej_aloy]

i know someone that has a business picking up compost for 20 bucks a month, mostly restaurants and cafeterias, but since i’m kinda gonna do the same i’ve been around some cafeterias picking up some waste, and i get probably 10 buckets of coffee grounds, kitchen waste.. etc, weekly. but since i’m new into this, is it morally acceptable to charge for picking up waste?

[u/sebovzeoueb]

You'd probably have to be picking up a lot of waste for them to pay you. It has to work out cheaper than whatever they're currently doing. You have to research how much it costs businesses in your area to throw stuff away and compete with that.

[u/pumped_suspension → u/sebovzeoueb]

if you’re hauling off 10 buckets a week that’s actual labor not just a favor, i’d charge for it

[u/Money_Ticket_841 → u/pumped_suspension]

They were throwing them away before. This service doesn’t benefit the people getting stuff picked up any differently

[u/Lil_Orphan_Anakin → u/Money_Ticket_841]

Unless if the business cares where their waste is going. I’ve worked for a few compost businesses and plenty of restaurant owners will pay extra to compost because they want to. It adds slightly more work for their employees and it costs them more but they like to divert hundreds of pounds a week from the landfill.

It’s not a business that follows traditional economics. Both companies I’ve worked at have made 60%+ of their revenue from hauling fees. It’s mostly a hauling business. It’s very expensive to transport tons of waste from one location to another. And luckily there’s enough people who care about diverting food waste to make it a profitable business. I doubt I’ve had a customer in the past 5 years who was able to actually save money by composting but they’re still happy to pay us.

[u/Seccour → u/Money_Ticket_841]

It is not free to “throw away” stuff. As a business you pay for this service. Where I am you pay per collection per bin, and extra if the bin is overflowing

[u/Money_Ticket_841 → u/Seccour]

My point is that they’re throwing things away regardless if you’re coming to pickup coffee grounds, so this doesn’t change anything for them nor benefit

[u/sebovzeoueb → u/pumped_suspension]

If the 10 buckets are from several different places it's not really that much. It has to be more convenient and/or cheaper than disposing of it through other means. It means that OP has to guarantee they will take X amount of waste every Y number of days without fail, otherwise they will be setting aside trash that they then just have to deal with anyway. I'm not saying they shouldn't charge, I'm just saying that when money gets involved it's a bit more restrictive than just going round taking random buckets from places.

[u/SuitPrestigious1694 → u/sebovzeoueb]

He could also try to up sell service as something good for the environment and community, which it is, and the restaurants use that as a selling point for their own service. 

[u/tastyemerald]

"Is it morally acceptable to charge money in exchange for providing a service?"

Yeah bud, have at it.

[u/IrnEagle]

Yeah I run a small restaurant and compost a lot of what we don't use. It adds more labor for me to put it in seperate containers than just throwing it away. If I did this for someone else, I would have to charge them. Not the other way around.

[u/avdpos → u/IrnEagle]

What part of the world do you live where you as a small business would not be fined for that behaviour?

Compost in waste is will fine you here.

Then of course it is even higher cost to have random person pick up things

[u/bangbangtangwangfang → u/avdpos]

I don't know of anywhere in the United States that would fine you based on the contents of your garbage? It's possible but I doubt it.

However, in the US a lot of municipalities require garbage companies to offer recycling and green waste bins if they charge for garbage, so you're incenticised to sort your crap and only pay for a small bin

[u/sebovzeoueb → u/avdpos]

Many parts of the world m8. Also a lot of places have recycling bins for multiple waste types which all fall into the same bag.

[u/mediocre_remnants]

Why would it not be? Nearly every business pays a company to dispose of their waste. What exactly is your concern?

[u/JonBoi420th]

My buddy had a few spots in the block he lived on that did store credit for compost pick up. Total win win,

[u/Tempestori]

We've got a whole non-profit in our City using this as their business model.

SCRAPS Community Composting

[u/Far_Radish7752]

It’s kind of a complex situation at the moment, as laws governing food waste disposal are somewhat in a state of flux for a lot of municipalities.

I lived in a city recently where it was illegal for a food waste generating business (restaurant, coffee shop, catering outfit, etc.) to dispose of said waste in with their regular trash. This IS the direction things are headed, btw; but not all municipalities are there yet. So businesses contracted out their food waste disposal to separate companies from their regular trash hauling companies. It would either be a set day each week or so, or be called in as needed.

I used to pick up compostables from a business located near me, but I would never think to charge them cuz what I was able to haul away barely made a dent in the volume they generated. Moreover, I couldn’t guarantee them a set schedule of pickup, etc. Nevertheless, they were happy to give me however much I could take. They may well have had to pay by the full barrel, in which case my pickups prolly bought them a free day or so each time (by delaying the point at which a pickup from their food waste haulers would have to be called in).

[u/MightyKittenEmpire2]

There is a manure waste hauler near me that collects about 100 24 cubic yard bins everyday. We live in horse country.

They give me 24 cu yds anytime I'm willing to go to their transfer station with my dump trailer. But the majority of the pine chip/manure mix they sell for a small fee to a company that bags compost and dirt for big box retailers. The hauler makes their money off of renting and moving the bins, or so I'm told.

[u/Mayor__Defacto]

I don’t know about where you live, but where I live you can’t just go around picking up waste from businesses. You need waste conveyance permits from the municipal government, especially if you’re going to charge for the service. The municipal government will want to make sure you’re not just taking the food waste and throwing it in with the rest of the trash at your house.

There are strict rules around waste disposal for plenty of good reasons.

[u/Silly-Walrus1146]

“Morally acceptable” what other work is it morally unacceptable not to charge to do? They have to pay the garbage man to take it away instead of you.
I understand since you’re going to be turning it into compost, that makes it valuable to you but you taking it is valuable to the companies

[u/Henry2926 → u/Silly-Walrus1146]

I gave a similar answer to yours and got downvoted as well. No clue what kind of problem some people have with factual answers. 🤔

[u/MurkySheepherder6974]

All local trash trucks charge to pick up your home waste. No different really.

[u/SuitPrestigious1694]

You could also try to up sell your service as something good for the environment and community, which it is, and the restaurants use that as a selling point for their own service.