The Impact of Pay-As-You-Throw Schemes on Municipal Solid Waste Management: The Exemplar Case of the County of Aschaffenburg, Germany

Juergen Morlok, Harald Schoenberger, David Styles, Jose-Luis Galvez-Martos and Barbara Zeschmar-Lahl
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Juergen Morlok: County of Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg D-63739, Germany
Harald Schoenberger: E 3 Environmental Consultants Ltd, Aberdeen AB118DY, UK
David Styles: E 3 Environmental Consultants Ltd, Aberdeen AB118DY, UK
Jose-Luis Galvez-Martos: E 3 Environmental Consultants Ltd, Aberdeen AB118DY, UK
Barbara Zeschmar-Lahl: BZL Kommunikation und Projektsteuerung GmbH, Oyten D-28876, Germany

Resources, 2017, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: The “pay-as-you-throw” (PAYT) scheme is an economic instrument for waste management that applies the “polluter pays” principle by charging the inhabitants of municipalities according to the amount of residual, organic, and bulky waste they send for third-party waste management. When combined with well-developed infrastructure to collect the different waste fractions (residual waste, paper and cardboard, plastics, bio waste, green cuttings, and many recyclables) as well as with a good level of citizens’ awareness, its performance has frequently been linked to an increase in the collection rates of recyclables. However, the establishment and operation of PAYT systems can require significant resource inputs from municipalities. In this paper, PAYT is analysed through a case study from the German County of Aschaffenburg, covering nearly 20 years of implementation across 32 municipalities with 173,000 inhabitants. Key performance indicators include temporal trends in the county’s recyclables collection rate, waste treatment fees for residents, and municipal waste management costs, benchmarked against German municipalities not implementing PAYT. We conclude that PAYT could make an important contribution towards material reuse and recycling objectives for the new circular economy.

Keywords: waste management; economic instruments; Pay-As-You-Throw; municipal solid waste; recycling; environmental management; awareness raising (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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