One of the big new expenses likely to find its way onto Suffolk homeowners’ billing statements from the city next year is trash disposal. The City Council is set to approve a budget from City Manager Selena Cuffee-Glenn that would include an $18.50-per-month charge for picking up trash each week.

With the Southeastern Public Service Authority set to contractually dissolve in 2018, Suffolk’s free ride for trash disposal could come to a screeching halt. Either Suffolk will be forced to pay someone else for dumping its garbage, or it will have to pay for the infrastructure needed to continue operating the regional landfill located within the city limits on its own. At best, even if some or all of the current SPSA participants agree to continue their partnership, it is likely that a renegotiation of terms will be demanded, and Suffolk’s freedom from tipping fees will be a thing of the past.

When that day comes, there will be a huge new expense in the city’s budget each year under the trash disposal heading. Make no mistake — there have been garbage-related expenses all along. The city pays for the purchase and maintenance of a fleet of garbage trucks, along with salaries and wages for the people who operate them and those who manage the Department of Public Works. And those expenses have been paid by taxpayers all along, of course, with general-fund contributions made through everything from real estate taxes to personal property taxes to meals taxes and licensing fees.

But the massive new expense that lies ahead demands that city officials consider how to make paying it a duty separate and distinct from paying annual property taxes. The city’s taxpayers could be forgiven for wondering why there wouldn’t be a corresponding reduction in their property taxes, license fees, meals taxes or other fees to offset the new cost, but it would be silly for them to believe they could forever avoid confronting the true cost of disposing of their own garbage. A separate fee was always almost a certainty.

One thing, though, that Suffolk taxpayers of every stripe can control to some degree is the speed at which the landfill gets used up. Right now, nearly all of the non-construction trash that is created in Hampton Roads gets sent to the waste-to-energy incinerator in Portsmouth. Most SPSA participants pay a steep fee to use that facility; Suffolk is exempted under the original agreement.

And that exemption has led to a complacency concerning the things that many of us toss in the trash. There has been little incentive to recycle in Suffolk, aside from the altruism of environmental consciousness. But recycling has at least one definite, even tangible, benefit — it keeps landfills open longer, delaying the need for hyper-expensive closures of old sections and the nearly-as-expensive permitting processes for new ones.

This is one case in which taxpayers truly can limit the money they spend on local government. By participating in recycling drives such as the one planned for Saturday at Bennett’s Creek Park, they can keep their landfill open longer and postpone the inevitable tax increases that will come about when it’s full.

Lots of people in Suffolk are fired up over this new garbage disposal fee. We wonder how many will be upset enough that they fill their cars and trucks with recyclables on Saturday and head off to Bennett’s Creek.