Garbage, Recycling, and Economic Incentives

固体废物处理在垃圾填埋和劳动力成本以及环境成本方面变得越来越昂贵。然而，大多数居民没有支付每单位垃圾的额外费用，因此认为处理是免费的。另一种方法将依赖于价格作为回收废物的激励。本项目的目的是开发一个分析模型和实证分析，以分析垃圾收集直接收费的联合问题，以鼓励回收，同时避免非法焚烧和倾倒等不当处理方法。这项研究很重要，因为它将阐明与固体废物回收定价激励有关的问题。每单位垃圾收集的最优价格将作为城市垃圾处理成本、额外环境成本、回收价值和居民对非法倾倒的反应程度的函数来推导。经验方法包括直接从160个城市收集数据，其中超过一半的城市最近征收了单位垃圾收集费。这些新数据将与人口普查数据结合起来，根据垃圾收集服务的价格、家庭收入和其他特征、路边回收收集的可用性和其他变量来估计对垃圾收集服务的需求。

Solid waste disposal is becoming increasingly expensive in terms of landfill and labor costs as well as environmental costs. Yet, most residents pay no additional cost per unit of trash put out for collection, and thus view disposal as free. An alternative approach would rely instead on prices as an incentive to recycle waste. The purpose of this project is to develop both an analytical model and empirical analysis for analyzing the joint problem of charging a direct fee for garbage collection to encourage recycling and at the same time avoiding improper disposal methods such as illegal burning and dumping. This research is important because it will shed light on the issues related to pricing incentives for the recycling of solid wastes. Expressions will be derived for the optimal price per unit of garbage collection as a function of the city's cost of landfill disposal, additional environmental costs, the value of recycling, and the extent to which residents respond with illegal dumping. The empirical approach involves collecting data directly from 160 cities, over half of which have recently instituted per unit trash collection fees. These new data will be combined with census data to estimate the demand for trash collection services as a function of its price, household income and other characteristics, the availability of curbside recycling collection, and other variables.