IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeeman/v29y1995i1p78-91.html

Garbage, Recycling, and Illicit Burning or Dumping

Author

Listed:
  • Fullerton Don
  • Kinnaman Thomas C.

Abstract

Additional solid waste disposal imposes resource and environmental costs, but most residents still pay no additional fee per marginal unit of garbage collection. In a simple model with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options, we show that the optimizing fee for garbage collection equals the resource cost plus environmental cost. When illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option, however, the optimizing fee for garbage collection can change sign. Burning or dumping is not a market activity and cannot be taxed directly, but it can be discouraged indirectly by a system with a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal either through recycling or garbage collection. This optimizing fee structure is essentially a deposit-refund system. The output tax helps achieve the first-best allocation even though it may affect the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure, because consumption leads to disposal problems while leisure does not.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Fullerton Don & Kinnaman Thomas C., 1995. "Garbage, Recycling, and Illicit Burning or Dumping," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 78-91, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:29:y:1995:i:1:p:78-91
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095-0696(85)71032-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:29:y:1995:i:1:p:78-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622870 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.