Financial Incentives for Increasing Household Waste Separation

STRUK, Michal. Financial Incentives for Increasing Household Waste Separation. In Eurasia 2016 Waste Management Symposium. 2016.

Basic information

• Original name: Financial Incentives for Increasing Household Waste Separation
• Authors: STRUK, Michal.
• Edition: Eurasia 2016 Waste Management Symposium, 2016.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50600 5.6 Political science
• Country of publisher: Turkey
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Keywords in English: financial incentives; household waste; recyclables; separation
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Many municipalities look for ways how to improve their waste management, both in terms of economic and environmental aspects. A common way to achieve this is by increasing the levels of separation of recyclables. Besides higher amount of separated waste that can be further utilized, the amount of generated mixed waste tends to decrease as well. In the presented paper we compare several types of financial incentives that can be used for increasing waste separation. After initial comparison of available studies we look at the results of using some of these incentives within the sample of Czech municipalities and compare the results between municipalities that use them and those who do not. Our results show that such incentives can have significant impact on the levels of separation. We compared the effects of several incentive schemes and identified the tax/charge discount-based scheme (where people get discount from the initially paid flat fee for waste collection, transport and treatment) to increase the separation levels almost three times, if compared to municipalities with no financial incentives. Slightly lower, but still good results were achieved in municipalities with Pay-As-You-Throw scheme, although it is not primarily aimed at increasing separation, but it still achieves it as a kind of by-product. Interestingly, we have found very little information regarding tax/charge discount-based schemes in other studies, while based on our results it can lead to very good results and can prove inspiring to municipalities looking for ways to increase waste separation.

Links

• MUNI/A/1047/2015, interní kód MU: Name: Redistribuční spravedlnost a alokační efektivnost politik veřejného sektoru. (Acronym: ReAlokVS_2016)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A