Charging for domestic waste in England: Combining environmental and equity considerations

Simon Dresner and Paul Ekins

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2010, vol. 54, issue 12, 1100-1108

Abstract: Waste reduction is generally environmentally preferable to recycling because it avoids the use of resources in the first place, rather than recycling them afterwards. It can also be cheaper in the long term, although bringing it about does involve costs. Variable waste charging is widely held to be the most viable way to bring about a waste-reducing change in consumer behaviour, but it is currently illegal in the UK, although the policy is now under review. Concerns have been expressed about possible regressive effects of variable waste charging on poorer households. Using data from South Norfolk District Council, the paper analyses the distributional implications of a simple system of variable waste charging by weight and proposes a scheme for England that would be designed to avoid leading to additional net costs for the poorest members of society.

Keywords: Variable waste charging; Distributional impacts; England; United Kingdom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344910000650
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:recore:v:54:y:2010:i:12:p:1100-1108

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.03.001

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().