Comment by Broken_Hippo

That's not really true.

Some places sell their cardboard scrap. I'm guessing that places with the right sorts of metal scrap get paid for their waste.

And folks have to pay for much of the rest. Some of the issue with dumping waste in a business's trash is that the business pays directly for waste removal in many places, unlike a lot of private folks, which pay through taxes.

This is the current state of things. What has changed is the sort of service that they need to pay for. Instead of destruction, they'd be paying for recycling or resale. Like now, they have the option of donation or reduced prices.