The Effect of Door-to-Door on Separate Collection of Plastic Packaging: Evidence from Catalonia

Germà Bel and Joël Bühler ()
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Joël Bühler: Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics (Public Policy Section) and GiM-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.

No 202410, IREA Working Papers from University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics

Abstract: In this article, we estimate the causal effect of the Door-to-Door waste collection policy on the separate collection of plastic waste in Catalonia. We use municipality-level data on the share of separately collected plastics and apply a Difference-in-Differences framework. We can demonstrate that Door-to-Door increased the share of separated plastics by around 75% compared to untreated units at the end of the sample period. Furthermore, our suggestive evidence indicates that there are no differences of Door-to-Door designs with source-separation of plastics from other recyclable waste components compared to those where plastics are collected with other materials and separated post-source. These findings highlight that Door-to-Door can be a highly effective measure to increase separate collection of plastics, a precondition for ambitious plastics recycling goals legislated by policy makers.

Keywords: Plastic waste; Door-to-Door; Recycling; Catalonia. JEL classification: K23, L65, Q53. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2024-02, Revised 2024-02
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ira:wpaper:202410

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