The Recycling Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Recycling Industry - Essay Example As the report stresses cities and towns in the United States of America. have been facing the dilemma of rising municipal solid waste (MSW) generation and declining capacity of aging landfills. In response, public officials have begun to implement new policies aimed at encouraging source reduction and waste diversion through increased recycling activity. Because the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act gives states the responsibility for nonhazardous waste management, these efforts have not been symmetric across the nation. Nonetheless, certain trends have become apparent, including the increased use of curbside services and the adoption of unit pricing schemes such as payment for recyclable waste, in order to meet local objectives. According to the paper findings Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal and recycling demand is based on a systems approach. The parameter estimates and associated demand elasticities have a practical application for state and local public officials who are undertaking the design and implementation of MSW management programs and policies. The benefits of MSW policy reforms as well as the expected benefits of policy to various constituencies are clear. Unit pricing or variable rate pricing due to its market orientation is now an important focus of economic research. The system of unit pricing is simple: each unit of waste disposal has an explicit price, so that the total fee paid for MSW services increases with the quantity of waste discards. "Hence, the unit price acts as a disincentive to dispose excess waste and, in theory can be adjusted to achieve state or local disposal targets" (Callan & Thomas, 2006: 221). This is supported by Ackerman (1996) who adds that once unit pricing is es tablished, the price elasticity of waste generation may be as little as - 0.12. This means that an 8% price increase caused only 1% drop in garbage disposal. When such a pricing scheme is lacking, the municipalities normally charge a flat fee for disposal services which is unrelated to the amount of waste generated. This eventually means that the household has no economic incentive to lower generation of waste or to divert it through recycling. This problem is increased if the flat fee is collected through property taxes, thus hidden from residents. Since this flat fee approach ignores the true marginal costs of providing MSW services, it results in an inefficient solution with too many resources allocated to municipality solid waste disposal, with greater stress on landfill capacity as the outcome.