Waste management regulation: policy solutions and policy shortcomings

Wolfram Berger and Yoko Nagase

Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 65, issue 3, 205-223

Abstract: A model of packaging waste management is presented to explore the policy options available to governments to implement waste regulation in light of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Our model endogenizes the packaging design as an additional determinant for the overall amount of waste jointly with consumers’ sorting effort and producers’ output decisions. The model shows that the policies that yield the first‐best allocation may not find public support. Furthermore, if the set of available policy instruments is limited, production and consumption of the good is likely to settle on a sub‐optimal level even though the optimal allocation may be achievable. Finally, the model demonstrates that a landfill tax may actually increase landfill waste in the presence of tradable credits for recycling activities. The results shed light on some shortcomings of existing regulatory schemes such as the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations of the UK.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12137

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:65:y:2018:i:3:p:205-223

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0036-9292

Access Statistics for this article

Scottish Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by Tim Barmby, Andrew Hughes-Hallett and Campbell Leith

More articles in Scottish Journal of Political Economy from Scottish Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().