PAWTUCKET — A company executive spoke in a small school gym, pairing psychology with garbage habits and economics with recycling as he pitched a proposal he says would help this city hammered by taxes and foreclosures.

Residents could save money if they agreed to pay a fee for each garbage bag, according to Mark Dancy, the president and chief executive officer of WasteZero, who’s pitching the proposal to residents in forums around the city.

The fee would give people reason to not want to buy too many bags, Dancy said. It would provide incentives to recycle more so as not to fill up the bags, a “pay-as-you-throw” program that would lower the tonnage sent to the Central Landfill and save the city at least $500,000 per year and conceivably more.

WasteZero would supply the bags bearing the city seal to local stores and manage and monitor inventory and financial details from its South Carolina headquarters.

Dancy said community governments have typically gotten an 85 percent-or-greater share of the bag user fees and the remainder goes to WasteZero. It would be up to a city what to do with user-fee revenue.

“If you use fewer bags and you start recycling, you’re going to pay less,” said Dancy, who said the program has proven successful in many Massachusetts communities.

Several of the 10 residents at the informational forum at Baldwin Elementary School, including City Councilman Jean Philippe Barros, made it clear that a fee system for garbage bags could prove a tough sell. The city just had an 8-percent tax increase, and people may be wary of a fee on bags even with the promise of saving them money.

Dancy acknowledged it can be a “little bit challenging, politically,” but that if people get a clear understanding that they will change their habits if there is a cost attached to the bags, then lowering taxes could happen. He said people have to remember that the amount of garbage a city sends to the landfill affects taxes.

Resident John Sawyer listened, asked lots of questions and gave Dancy advice: Get the explanation to a point where you can say: If a resident paid X for bags in a year, he or she would save a significantly greater Y in taxes. Get the information out in Pawtucket the way it got out in Concord, N.H., Sawyer said, where there was lengthy public airing and detailed, publicly posted documents.

“That’s the kind of message you need to deliver,” said Sawyer, who acknowledged he is on the fence about the WasteZero program but willing to hear more.

Sawyer and the other residents sat at tables facing in the opposite direction from an arrow pointed toward Providence painted on a wall mural — a metaphor for what’s happening in Rhode Island. Cities and towns, searching for savings in garbage and recycling, are in two camps: “pay as you throw” and “no bin, no barrel.”

Providence this month joined about six communities with a version of a “no bin, no barrel” policy. In Providence’s case, all recycling bins must be placed out with garbage cans on pickup day or the trash is not picked up. That has quickly drawn wrath from some residents –– and a resolution from one Providence councilman seeking to temporarily suspend the program. No bin, no barrel, has not been contentious in other places, such as Lincoln.

At least 11 communities in Rhode Island have some version of pay-as-you-throw.

“This is what we see across the country, is that when people pay for their trash bags, they are feeling direct responsibility for the cost of disposing of their waste,” said Sarah Kite, recycling resources director at Rhode Island Resource Recovery. “It causes people to think before they throw.”

WasteZero has also been used for 15 years in Worcester, Mass. Pawtucket would be the state’s first larger city to go to this kind of pay-as-you-throw and its larger number of multifamily and multirental homes draws questions of whether a paid-bag system would work.

Therese Campbell, a landlord who attended the forum, said she knows people who will say “they can’t afford to be buying these bags.” At the same time, she said something must be done about taxes that go “up and up and up.”WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU

Pay as you throw

WHERE IT STANDS: WasteZero has seven more information forums slated at Pawtucket schools through Dec. 17 on its pay-as-you-throw garbage/recycling program. There is no formal proposal before the City Council, which would presumably hold public hearings if a proposal is made.

MODELS IN PLACE: Middletown, which has the highest recyling rate in the state, is the only Rhode Island community using WasteZero for pay-as-you-throw. Other communities using various forms of pay-as-you-throw, including taking items to a transfer station, are Middletown, Central Falls, North Smithfield, South Kingstown, North Kingstown, Narragansett, Block Island, Westerly, Hopkinton, Richmond, and Charlestown.

mmckinne@projo.com