Rebekah Allen of Concord came to Market Basket yesterday to do her shopping, and planned to look for the new trash bags required by the city's pay-as-you-throw system. The bags were not there.

Market Basket, alone among Concord's major supermarkets, has decided not to stock the trash bags. Their logic is simple: Why sell an item for which the store gets no profit?

Allen, when told of the decision, said she would still shop at Market Basket, and she did not mind going to another store for trash bags.

"I think it's a bad program anyway," Allen said of pay-as-you-throw. "I agree with (Market Basket)."

By refusing to sell the purple pay-as-you-throw bags, Market Basket has inserted itself into the controversy over a new trash system that will require Concord residents to pay for each bag of trash they throw out, beginning July 6.

Market Basket's decision was made on the corporate level, not at local stores. David McLean, operations manager for Market Basket, said the company is reviewing its policy in Concord and in multiple other communities where pay-as-you-throw has been instituted. Market Basket has 59 stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

"All of a sudden, all these towns are taking on these programs and wanting businesses to subsidize the towns and do it for nothing, and have their customers foot the expense of carrying those products," McLean said.

The way the program works is the city has a contract with a South Carolina company called Waste Zero. Waste Zero manufactures the bags and recruits stores to sell them. Waste Zero stores the bags in warehouses, and the individual stores contact Waste Zero to have bags shipped to them.

Consumers then pay $1 for a 15-gallon trash bag and $2 for a 30-gallon bag. The stores get none of that money. Instead, the stores must send all the money they collect from the bags to Waste Zero, which takes a cut and gives the rest of the money to the city. Mark Dancy, president of Waste Zero, said his company typically keeps 20 to 25 cents for each large bag.

The rest of the money goes into the city's solid waste fund. Bob McManus, business manager for Concord's general services department, said the money pays for trash collection, which costs about $1 million a year through a contract with Bestway Disposal Services. It is also used to pay tipping fees for trash disposal at the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy facility in Penacook. Those fees are increasing from $43.50 per ton in fiscal year 2009, which ends this month, to $56 a ton in 2010, and to $65 a ton in 2011.

"The cost of the bag covers the cost of the service," McManus said. Until the program takes off, McManus said, he cannot predict whether the city will make money or lose money, but the goal is for the program to break even. "The city's not in this business to make money," McManus said.

According to city budget projections, Concord will take in $1.95 million from pay-as-you-throw in 2010. The cost for disposing of solid waste will be $1.94 million.

More than 7,000 municipalities across the country have adopted pay-as-you-throw, including 45 communities in New Hampshire, according to Concord's Solid Waste Advisory Committee. The goal of the programs is to reduce trash disposal and increase recycling rates.

But the expansion of these programs worries stores like Market Basket. Although Market Basket does stock bags in a few towns, McLean said as the programs proliferate, the store must rethink its policy.

"They want businesses to buy the product, pay for the product, pay for losses incurred if bags disappear, to manage the product, warehouse the product, and then turn all the money over to a company in South Carolina that sends most of it to the towns or cities," McLean said. "There's no profit, no gain."

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