How a Fee Per-Unit Garbage Affects Aggregate Recycling in a Model with  Heterogeneous Households

This paper explores public policies for reduction of municipal solid waste. We parameterize a simple model of waste disposal using supply and demand elasticities from the economics literature and 1990 prices and quantities of recyclable and recycled materials. Using this model, we calculate the waste reduction in response to three public policies: (i) deposit/ refunds, (ii) advance disposal fees, and (iii) recycling subsidies. The results illustrate the effects of the three policies on source reduction and recycling of five recyclable materials that comprise 56 percent of municipal solid waste: aluminum, glass, paper, plastic, and steel. The calculated responses provide information about the cost of reducing municipal solid waste through various policies. This analysis suggests that a 7.5 percent reduction in disposal of the solid wastes in the model might have been optimal in 1990 from a benefit-cost perspective.

show abstract

“…For simplicity, we assume this marginal effort cost equals zero. Kinnaman and Fullerton (1995) (2) shows the equilibrium in this market.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cost of Reducing Municipal Solid Waste

Palmer

Sigman

Walls

1997

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

184

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One study (Kinnaman and Fullerton, 1994), dealing with garbage recycling, examines why some households participate in curbside recycling programs, even in the absence of a user fee; why other households do not participate, even in the presence of a user fee; and why some households choose to litter while others do not. However, the Kinnaman and Fullerton (1994) paper deals with user fees and does not address the issue of conditional cooperation in littering behavior.…”

Section: Overview Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and Pro-Social Norms: Evidence on Littering

Torgler¹,

Frey²,

Wilson³

2009

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis &Amp; Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper investigates the relationship between pro-social norms and its implications for improved environmental outcomes. This is an area, which has been neglected in the environmental economics literature. We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate a small but significant positive impact between perceived environmental cooperation (reduced public littering) and increased voluntary environmental morale. For this purpose we use European Values Survey (EVS) data for 30 European countries. We also demonstrate that Western European countries are more sensitive to perceived environmental cooperation than the public in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, the results also demonstrate that environmental morale is strongly correlated with several socio-economic and environmental variables. Several robustness tests are conducted to check the validity of the results.

show abstract

“…As well, there exists a literature (e.g. Kinnaman & Fullerton, 1994; Fullerton & Kinnaman, 1996; Kinnaman, 2006) which examines households' decisions to recycle waste in a competitive setting but does not address the recycling problem.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Endogenous Consumer Participation and the Recycling Problem*

Baksi

Long

2009

Australian Economic Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We endogenise the extent of consumer participation in the recycling process, and analyse its effect on the ‘recycling problem’. When recycling requires consumers to undertake costly sorting activities to separate scrap from household waste, they will participate only if the net reward from sorting is positive. Consumers' sorting cost is subject to a network effect arising due to social norms. With heterogeneous consumers differing in terms of their sorting cost, the entire output of the recyclable product may not be subsequently available as scrap to the recycling firms. This increases the virgin producer's monopoly power, and may also lead to multiple equilibria if the network effect of sorting is sufficiently large. The latter result suggests a role for the government in influencing equilibrium selection to improve social welfare. Depending on the fraction of consumers that participate in recycling, increased societal pressure on consumers to recycle may decrease consumer participation and increase the virgin producer's market power.

show abstract

How a Fee Per-Unit Garbage Affects Aggregate Recycling in a Model with Heterogeneous Households

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

The Cost of Reducing Municipal Solid Waste

The Cost of Reducing Municipal Solid Waste

Environmental and Pro-Social Norms: Evidence on Littering

Endogenous Consumer Participation and the Recycling Problem*

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About