When you offer free rubbish disposal, you'll get more rubbish

The Rotorua Daily Post reported today:

Kāinga Ora has been forced to pick up the clean-up tab after “mountains of rubbish” were dumped on Rotorua’s Wrigley Rd following what was supposed to be a friendly day to bring the street’s community together.

More than 40 tyres, whiteware, lawnmowers, old mattresses, drawers, old bikes, bags of household rubbish and dirty nappies were dumped on Fordlands’ Wrigley Rd, mainly over the weekend, after people who don’t live on the street “abused” a clean-up day organised by Kāinga Ora that offered free skip bins...

One resident, who didn’t want her name published for fear of repercussions, told the Rotorua Daily Post it was initially an awesome day as residents were pitching in to help each other carry heavy items, including old fridges and mattresses...

She said word then quickly spread, including on social media, that Wrigley Rd was the place to go to dump rubbish free of charge.

She said on Friday she was concerned when more people arrived in cars with trailers and started to dump rubbish.

None of this should be particularly surprising. When the cost of doing something (in this case, rubbish disposal) reduces, people will tend to more of that thing. When the cost is lowered to zero, people may do a lot more of that thing. When the residents of Wrigley Road were offered free rubbish disposal, we shouldn't be surprised that the Wrigley Road residents disposed of lots of extra rubbish.

However, this came with an unintended consequence. Because there was no way of easily policing who was disposing of rubbish, other enterprising individuals took the opportunity to dispose of their rubbish in Wrigley Road as well. As I note in my ECONS102 class, this might have come as a shock to the Kāinga Ora staff, because they didn't think through the incentives that free rubbish disposal creates. That's because it's easy to envision how people who think like you do will react to an incentive plan, but not everyone thinks like you do. In fact, people are often far smarter at taking advantage of incentives than we give them credit for.

So, it should not surprise us at all that offering free rubbish disposal resulted in a lot of rubbish being dumped.