Dayton, Ohio ? Thrift-driven Americans are fixing up, making do and reusing so much to cope with the recession that the drop in throwaways means less fill for landfills.

To deal with the drop-off in dropoffs, landfills are laying off workers, reducing hours of operation and hiking disposal fees, with the increases passed along to cities, businesses and consumers.

“You can look at waste and see what the economy is doing,” said Tom Houck, manager at the Defiance County Landfill in northwest Ohio. He’s watched the amount of trash arriving at the landfill plunge 30 percent in the past year.

With consumers cutting back on new purchases, there is less packaging to throw away. The downturn in new housing means less waste from construction materials such as insulation and from discarded drywall and lumber. Restaurant waste is down because people are eating out less.

“We’re seeing this all over the country,” said Bruce Parker, president and CEO of National Solid Wastes Management Association.

Environmentalists applaud the trash slash.

“That will mean the landfills will last longer,” said Ed Hopkins, director of the environmental quality program for the Sierra Club. “That is good for the public because nobody likes to live next to a landfill.”

Hopkins said the reduction in waste is good for the environment because even modern landfills can leak, enabling pollutants to seep into groundwater.

Landfills in Ohio received 15 percent less waste from August to January than they did for the same period a year earlier. The waste stream at Miramar Landfill near San Diego has dropped 35 percent over the past year. Waste at Puente Hills Landfill near Los Angeles is down from 12,500 tons of trash a day to about 8,500.

Several landfills operated by Waste Management Inc. — which runs about 270 active landfills in 47 states — have gone from operating six days a week to five or have reduced hours of operation, said spokeswoman Lisa Kardell.

Potential trash is being sent to repair shops.

Louis Johnston, an economist at the College of St. Benedict in Collegeville, Minn., said that during good economic times people spend about 1 percent of their consumption budget on repairs. During recessions, that jumps to 5 percent.

When the ice maker in Maureen Schlangen’s 12-year-old refrigerator went kaput, she didn’t have the fridge hauled to a landfill. The woman went back to ice trays, buying two for $1.50 apiece and borrowing a Mickey Mouse tray from a neighbor in the Dayton suburb of Kettering.