Before 2002, Ireland, like the rest of the world, produced large quantities of waste in the form of plastic grocery bags. Today, the amount of plastic bag waste has been reduced by 94 percent. How did such a miracle occur? The government must have launched a massive educational campaign and spent millions of dollars teaching its citizens about the costs of their buying habits. If not that, then the government must have passed a complicated regulation stating when stores are allowed to pass out plastic trash bags.

Wrong.

The Irish government imposed a 33-cent tax on every plastic bag given out in supermarkets. Most shoppers now bring their own reusable cloth bags. While this drastic change in consumer behavior may appear to be a miracle to some, it is only one example of what happens when people are forced to pay for their behavior, be it good or bad.

Taxing something, as demonstrated by Ireland, is one of the easiest ways of either encouraging or discouraging behavior. If you want people to do more of something, tax it less (or not at all); if you want people to do less of something, tax it more.

Imagine going to the supermarket and paying only $20, no matter how much food you purchase. What would happen? People would most likely take as much food as they could carry every time they went into the market, regardless of whether or not they really needed it. This is exactly what plays out in the trash collection system in Hawai'i and many other parts of the world.

Right now, individuals and families in Hawai'i have no reason to conserve or recycle. While individuals pay a tax for their trash collection, the tax is a flat rate that encourages people to create as much trash as they want with no thought toward recycling, composting or purchasing goods with less packaging.

If I dedicate myself to reducing the amount of waste I produce, the cost of my trash collection does not go down. Likewise, if I decide to have a Super Bowl party every weekend at my house and use only paper plates and cups, I am not charged anything extra for my excessive amount of trash.

People across the board are producing more trash than they normally would, simply because they are not aware of all the costs associated with their actions.

Running a landfill requires a lot of manpower and resources. These costs are invisible to everyone except for those operating the landfill. The Waimanalo Gulch landfill in Nanakuli is full to capacity and we are still dumping trash by the truckload. No other part of the island has to deal with the trash they create and so no one thinks twice about throwing away bottles, cans or anything else. We put it in the trash can and forget about it. What people need is a reminder of how much they threw away in the form of a bill from the city at the end of each month.

If the state and its residents are concerned about recycling and reducing the consumption of materials that cannot be recycled, how about taxing the amount of trash thrown away?

This idea is commonly referred to as a "pay as you throw" system. Communities on the Mainland and in Europe have instituted programs based on the basic premise that people should pay for the amount of trash they are producing. Individuals are charged a set rate on each bag or charged based on the weight of their trash. By showing people that there is an actual cost associated with their consumption habits, a pay-as-you-throw system encourages people to recycle, compost or buy goods that have less packaging. Our wallets are closer to our hearts than our recycle bins.

Although such an idea would require planning and well-thought-out enforcement, the basic idea makes a great deal of sense.

Imagine a world in which conserving and reducing our environmental footprint actually reaps tangible rewards.

I believe we would see a large increase in the amount of recycling, composting and conservation efforts both individually and collectively.

People would become aware of their habits and begin to save money as their trashing habits changed.

Local landfills would see large reductions in the amount of trash they handle, which would reduce the need for new landfills that would inevitably be in someone's backyard. Most importantly, an issue of basic fairness, pay for how much trash you create, would be settled in a simple and straightforward way.

Raphael Gang teaches at an elementary school in Pearl City and Scot Matayoshi teaches at a middle school in Nanakuli. They wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.