Ours doesn't cost too much, about $18/month for up to 5 big bags each week.  We split the bill with our next door neighbor and only pay $9 (it's in our name).  We barely produce one bag of garbage ourselves for our family of three.

I recycle everything that I can recycle and reuse a lot of #5 plastics for potting up seedlings, feed scoops, stuff like that.  I save cardboard and paper to start fires in the woodstove or bonfires outside.  I compost everything, the usual kitchen veggie scraps, weeds from the garden and also meat scraps, bones, papertowels, coffee grounds, frying oil.  I have a gi-normous compost pile and I've found that you can compost anything if you bury it deep enough in a hot compost pile!  I even compost the opossums that we knock off for raiding the coop.

I suppose I could also save my family $10,000 and just have them bury me a couple feet deep in my compost pile when my time comes.  That seems fitting…