Los Angeles has raised its trash collection fees, again. From $11 several years ago, it's now $36.32 for a house. This, we are told, means the city is no longer giving residents a subsidized discount for trash collection. Garbage now pays its own way.

Fair enough. But one-size-fits-all service and cost don't fit all. Why should an elderly person living in a 2-bdr-1-ba pay the same for putting a few pounds of trash in those three big bins as the residents of some lot-to-lot mini-mansion with more bathrooms, and more trash, than a Holiday Inn?

There must be some flexible pricing options here somewhere. Now that the city recycles everything, could I cut my trash fee by one-third by using only the blue recycling bin and the green foliage bin, and giving up the black all-purpose trash bin?

It might be an incentive to people to recycle. It might also be an incentive to trash-crime. If my garden-less neighbors chose to give up their green bin to save money, would I catch them tiptoeing down the street one night to put their dead house plants in my green bin? Would they notice if I sneaked across the road to put some unrecyclable gunk in their black bin? Could I give up the city's trash service altogether, and actually make dough on the whole proposition by selling my recyclables and smuggling the rest of my discards in to work, to dump in the office trash?

If the city can't put some flexibility in its program, should we start shopping for competition? Is there a bargain trash collection service out there willing to underbid the city's $36.32 a month? Everybody knows trash collection's old mobbed-up reputation -- maybe there's some Tony Soprano West Coast nephew whose entry-level job in the family business is driving a Wednesday-morning trash collection route, in a '72 Caddy Seville.

Photo by Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times