Waste charging where residents pay by the amount they throw away — by volume or weight — rather than a flat fee, to reward reducing and sorting.
🤖 This definition was generated with AI from the sources linked throughout. It has not had a complete human review — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources. How this works.
Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT), sometimes called a volume-based or unit-based waste fee, charges households for the rubbish they actually generate instead of a flat annual fee. The more you throw away, the more you pay — turning waste into something with a visible price, so cutting, reusing and sorting it saves real money.
The billing can be low-tech or smart. The simplest version sells official rubbish bags or bin tags, so buying fewer bags means paying less. The precise version uses RFID: a chip identifies the household, a scale weighs the waste, and the charge lands on the monthly bill. South Korea made weight-based food-waste charging standard nationwide from 2013, and Seoul runs it through RFID kiosks that weigh each household's food scraps and bill by the kilogram — a scheme whose 2012 pilot measured a 25% cut in food waste ahead of the citywide rollout.
The trade-offs are well documented. A per-bag or per-kilo charge can be regressive, and it tempts people to dodge the fee by dumping waste illegally or contaminating free recycling streams. RFID systems add hardware and maintenance cost, and dense apartment blocks with shared bins make it hard to pin a bag on one household — so PAYT works best alongside easy, free recycling and steady enforcement.
Added 2026-07-19 · Part of the growing Smart City Glossary