Waste

Waste in Microlandia is a daily flow, not a pile. Each citizen makes a fixed amount of solid waste per day. Homeless citizens make roughly double, because they have no kitchen or storage to consolidate their trash. The city is billed a fixed cost per ton collected and processed. That number covers labor, equipment, transport, and disposal in one line item. There is no landfill model. Collection and processing happen on the same daily charge.

Sanitation workers are hired through a dedicated public-works employer rather than being assigned per building, and the staffing target follows a simple ratio of workers per daily ton. Their monthly salaries land on the city’s waste budget on top of the per-ton collection cost. Both pull from the same line, so the waste budget is really one combined “collection plus payroll” budget.

Understaffing right now does not reduce collected tonnage in the simulation. The cost-per-ton is the dominant cost lever. But every sanitation job is also one fewer unemployed adult, which feeds into the crime model on the previous page, so a fully staffed sanitation department helps the rest of the city too.

Your room to maneuver

You cannot change how much waste a citizen makes, but you can change three other things:

• How many citizens you have, through housing density and immigration.
• How many of them are homeless, through shelters.
• How much you pay per ton, by editing the cost itself. The default number is a real-world New York City benchmark, so most cities will not need to touch it.

The size of this line on your monthly budget tracks your population almost linearly.

Parameters

Daily waste per citizen kg

2

Amount of solid waste generated by each citizen per day.

Source: NYC Department of Sanitation

Sanitation workers per daily ton

0.66

Sanitation workers required per daily ton of waste collected.

Source: NYC Department of Sanitation Annual Reports & Budget

Waste collection cost ton

$566

Cost of collecting and processing one ton of solid waste. This cost includes expenses related to labor, equipment, transportation, and disposal fees. It will be deducted from the city’s funds daily based on DAILY_WASTE_PER_CITIZEN_KG

Source: NYC Department of Sanitation

Sanitation worker monthly

$3,735

The monthly salary paid to each sanitation worker. This amount is deducted from the city’s waste management budget.

Source: NYC DSNY

Workforce coverage multiplier

1.25

Multiplier applied to the headcount-from-tonnage formula to make 7-day coverage explicit: vacation, sick leave, and weekend/holiday rotations.

⚠️ Source pending