I've been going through my budget to see where I can tighten up or eliminate expenses and I've come to a bit of dilemma with my trash service. We're in a relatively small town, but have about 6 trash pickup providers available (no city service). The expense of trash pickup has steadily increased over the past 10 years with our current company and has now reached about $390 per year, so I started looking at alternatives. We could change companies and switch to a smaller trash bin for about half the cost, but I came up with another possible solution.
We own a condo in a complex that is very close to our house and rent it to my mother-in-law at a below market price (and she provides some babysitting, family meals, etc. in return). I usually take her trash bags out to the community dumpster when we visit since her mobility is somewhat limited and have never had any issues. We've been recycling most of our plastic, paper, and cardboard at my wife's employer and are down to 2-3 of the 13 gallon bags per week. I'm sure we could put our trash bags in with my MIL's when I take them out and nobody would notice a thing, but I wanted to get a read on what some of you think. We are the legal owners of the residence, so I don't suspect it's an issue from that end. The dumpsters are always less than half-full, so I don't see that we'd be harming anyone else's interests. We recycle and compost, so I don't know that we can get down to a "zero trash output" household.
What do you think you would do, negotiate with your current provider and change companies if they won't drop their price, add your trash to what's already going to the condo dumpster, or something else entirely? Thanks.