Waste
Garbage is a daily chore for your city. Your sanitation crews collect it, then it needs somewhere to go: into your own landfill or out of town for a fee.
The amount grows with your population. Each citizen adds a fixed amount of waste per day, which includes a share of what shops, offices and public buildings throw away. Homeless citizens count for twice as much: managing waste is harder without a kitchen or storage. Helping people find housing also eases the load on your crews.
Collection
The Department of Public Works hires sanitation workers as the daily waste load grows. Its staffing target includes cover for weekends, illness and leave, so collections can run every day.
There is some breathing room: crews can still collect all the day’s garbage at 80% of the staffing target. Below that, they start leaving waste behind. The fewer workers you have, the more piles up on the streets, making citizens ill and hurting your approval rating. If garbage starts building up, check whether sanitation jobs are being filled. Once enough workers are back, the crews can catch up over the following days.
Exporting
A new city sends its collected garbage out of town through the Regional Waste Compact, an agreement to pay for disposal elsewhere. This lets you get started without building a landfill, but you pay for every ton you send away.
The Compact reviews its price every January. The usual increase doubles if you export more than three-quarters of your waste. Rely on it very little and the price falls instead. It can never fall below the starting rate or rise beyond a fixed ceiling.
A sudden jump in exports can also bring a bigger bill. The Compact updates its estimate of your daily exports once a month and allows you to send 25% more at the normal rate. Anything above that costs extra. Rapid growth or a big cleanup can push you over that allowance until the estimate catches up.
Keep enough money available to pay, too. If your treasury reaches its debt limit, the Compact stops accepting garbage. Anything your landfill cannot take stays on the street.
Landfills
Your own landfill costs less per ton than exporting, but you also pay for its upkeep every month. For a small town, that extra bill may outweigh the savings. As your city grows, a landfill becomes easier to justify. The city buries as much as the site can take each day and exports the rest.
Choose the site with care: nearby citizens dislike living beside a landfill. Every load also uses up space permanently. Plan for more room before it fills, or the garbage you used to bury will go back onto your export bill.
The bill
You pay for collection by the ton actually picked up, covering trucks, fuel and handling. In the budget report, Waste Management includes those collection costs, disposal fees and landfill upkeep. Your crews’ wages appear separately under Public Service Salaries, so remember to include both when working out what clean streets cost you.
The figures below show how much waste to plan for, how many workers it takes and the costs behind your bill.
Parameters
Each parameter names its basis. Measured: a published figure, converted to game units. Calibration: a game-scale coefficient whose direction and scale are grounded in sources, but whose exact value was chosen for play. Scenario: an authored assumption about this fictional region.
Daily waste per citizen kg
2
Municipal solid waste per resident per day, using population as a proxy for homes, shops, offices and institutions together. Rounded calibration against EPA’s 2018 US figure of 4.9 lb (2.22 kg) per person per day. That benchmark includes waste subsequently recycled or composted; the game routes its whole collected stream to disposal.
Basis: calibration
Source: US EPA — National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling (2018 data)
Sanitation workers per daily ton
0.66
Sanitation workers needed per ton of waste a day, before WORKFORCE_COVERAGE_MULTIPLIER; together they give 0.66 × 1.25 ≈ 0.83. New York had about 8,150 uniformed sanitation staff for about 10,000 metric tons collected a day in fiscal 2024, 0.81 per daily ton. Those staff also sweep streets and clear snow, so the game’s crews are generous for collection alone.
Basis: calibration
Source: NYC Mayor’s Management Report FY2024 — Department of Sanitation
Waste collection cost ton
$566
Retired as a billing rate; kept because the split that replaced it must add up to it: COLLECTION_COST_TON (436) plus the Compact’s opening price, EXPORT_TIP_BASE (130), is 566, so a save from before the waste economy opens to the same first bill, and a test pins that identity. $566 is New York’s fully loaded refuse cost per ton in fiscal 2023, which DSNY splits as $344 collection (crews included) and $222 disposal; the game’s split is its own. DSNY counts short tons, so per metric ton the real figure is about $624.
Basis: measured
Source: NYC Mayor’s Management Report FY2024 — Department of Sanitation
Collection cost ton
$436
Calibrated non-payroll charge per metric ton actually collected, for trucks, fuel, wear and transfer handling. NYC’s fiscal 2023 collection cost was $344 per short ton, about $379 per metric ton INCLUDING labour; it does not measure this $436 excluding wages. At default staffing and pay, wages add about $101 per metric ton: opening collection plus export totals about $667, against NYC’s fully loaded $624 per metric ton. The game’s cost split is a balance choice.
Basis: calibration
Source: NYC Mayor’s Management Report FY2024 — Department of Sanitation, FY2023 costs
Export tip base
$130
Opening export fee and contract floor, per metric ton. Calibrated from NYC’s 2016 long-term export price of $129.81 per short ton, about $143 per metric ton, without inflation adjustment. The game’s $130 is about 9% below that historical benchmark. NYC’s rise from $63.39 in 2007 accompanied new long-haul contracts; the Compact’s annual increases, dependence premium, shocks and spot multiplier are game rules.
Basis: calibration
Landfill tip local
$62
Calibrated burial charge per metric ton. EREF’s 2024 US average gate fee was $62.28 per short ton, about $69 per metric ton, so $62 is about 10% lower. A gate fee covers more than marginal burial costs; adding LANDFILL_ZONE_DATA.maintenanceCost per tile each month makes the game’s total a balance choice rather than a measured operating cost. Each buried ton also consumes finite airspace.
Basis: calibration
Source: Environmental Research & Education Foundation — 2024 Analysis of MSW Landfill Tipping Fees
Landfill density tons m3
0.8
Tons of compacted waste per cubic metre of landfill. EPA lists 1,200–1,700 lb per cubic yard for small, well-run landfills and 1,700–2,000 for large ones, 0.71–1.01 and 1.01–1.19 metric tons per m³; 0.8 is about 1,350 lb/yd³, the small-landfill end. It is the density behind LANDFILL_TONS_PER_TILE: 100 m² × about 20 m permitted height × 0.8 = 1,600 tons a tile, the airspace the Full-by date counts down.
Basis: measured
Source: US EPA — Volume-to-Weight Conversion Factors (April 2016)
Sanitation worker monthly
$3,735
Calibrated base monthly wage, $44,820 a year, before civic wage floors and city pay overrides. DSNY’s careers page lists a higher starting salary of $47,752 a year, with pay rising through service; its benefits and overtime are additional. This base models wages rather than an experienced worker’s full employment cost. The budget report lists sanitation payroll under Public Service Salaries.
Basis: calibration
Source: NYC DSNY
Workforce coverage multiplier
1.25
Extra headcount so collection runs seven days a week through leave, sickness and weekend rotas, multiplied into SANITATION_WORKERS_PER_DAILY_TON: 0.66 × 1.25 ≈ New York’s 0.81 uniformed staff per daily ton. A game rule.
Basis: calibration