There’s been a lot of trash talking these days about trash.

Residents in many Carbon County municipalities have experienced increases in the amount they pay to have regular scheduled garbage pickups. And they’re not happy about it.

The most recent changes I’ve seen in the Panther Valley came in Nesquehoning, where residents will join countless others in the region in a rate increase.

Five years ago, borough council there approved a pact with Tamaqua Transfer that cost $1,936,000. Last month they OK’d a contract for $3,421,085 that ends in 2029.

Nesquehoning leaders haven’t yet set the new monthly cost to residents, but they’ve assured people bills will stay at the current rate through the end of this year, though the new contract takes effect Oct. 1.

Last November, anticipating a sizable hauling contract increase, borough leaders increased the monthly fee by $5 and shifted money from its sewage account to soften the blow of the expected rate hike.

The latest pact adds a monthly bulk pickup and changes the pickup times in the borough.

Surrounding municipalities, too, experienced increases in the cost of trash removal.

In Jim Thorpe, monthly garbage bills doubled, increasing to $50 in a new contract.

Already, Tamaqua, in the middle of a five-year hauling contract, pays $75 quarterly, an increase of about $100 per year from the previous contract.

In my younger days, there was no municipal collection in the patch town where I grew up. I’m sure it was the same in many places throughout the Coal Region.

Table scraps were dog food. Leftover plant material, vegetables, coffee grounds and cooking grease helped fertilize next season’s yield from the backyard garden. Waste paper burned in rusted, 50-gallon drums. Some bottles returned to the source for a deposit, while other glass became targets for BB guns.

What was left — mostly tin cans or some hard plastic items — were tossed over the edge of the stripping hole behind the house, often joining an occasional abandoned Chrysler, Plymouth or Pontiac that somehow slipped into gear and found its way into the dump’s depths.

These days, though, there are laws against that type of stuff.

No local government has gone unscathed when it comes to paying to haul away its garbage, for a lot of reasons.

Among them are the same inflation and rising costs that affects every one of us.

For a long time, local governments and their residents have enjoyed the benefits of contracts that may have been for as many as five years.

Those agreements were negotiated when haulers had lower costs themselves. Years back, fuel and labor costs were less than they are now, not to mention the cost to repair or replace vehicles and equipment.

Some of those pacts were pre-pandemic. COVID-19 changed our lives in many ways, especially when it comes to working at home.

Naturally, people spending more time at home leads to more garbage. Sometimes, haulers need to double their efforts on pick-up days. That costs them more and often that cost is passed on in future contracts.

Add to that the cost of actually emptying the trucks at a landfill, and costs have skyrocketed. Tipping fees increased because the landfills face the same types of increases as haulers.

And let’s not forget today’s labor costs. Finding sanitation workers is hard. Keeping them is harder, given hours and not-so-comfy demands of the job.

Sometimes, there are ways to keep those costs down and many local governments participate in various forms of recycling.

Often, residents are asked to sort what they throw away, setting aside materials that can be recycled.

Despite their best efforts, though, it doesn’t always work as markets for recyclable materials have dried up. When there’s no place for those items to go, they usually end up in landfills.

In other places, bottle bills offer consumers cash incentives to keep recyclables out of landfills, thus helping the environment and keeping communities cleaner.

Unfortunately, no such law exists in Pennsylvania.

If there’s a bright side to all this, the county and its local governments are fortunate to have a nearby trash transfer facility that eliminates the need for extended trips to faraway landfills and helps lower costs. And in the long run, though the cost of hauling away what we no longer can use has increased, it’s still a good deal when it’s broken down to a daily basis.

As I see it, it’s not like we’re just throwing our money away.

ED SOCHA | tneditor@tnonline.com

Ed Socha is a retired newspaper editor with more than 40 years’ experience in community journalism.

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.