The paper provides an evaluation of the Ecopass road pricing scheme for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. The term Ecopass conveys the stated political objective of the scheme: a PASS to improve the quality of the urban environment (ECO). The scheme has actually improved the air quality in Milan,...

TRT Trasporti e Territorio (Milano) The transport sector is facing big challenges, such as the need for reducing greenhouse gases and the pressure on fossil fuels price. Tackling such challenges requires structural changes and policy should play a steering role. Therefore, transport policy...

Management of Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE also called e-waste) has become an issue of critical importance recently also in the frame of industrial ecology besides waste management per se, mostly due to their content in hazardous materials and the extensive implications of any...

Car use is an increasingly serious problem in many modern cities because of polluting emissions, noise, accidents and congestion. To examine this issue, this paper analyzes the individual choice between taking the car and using alternative transport modes (e.g. walking, cycling, taking the bus...

La protezione del paesaggio è stata per lungo tempo affidata alla Pubblica Amministrazione, che per lo svolgimento di questo compito si è avvalsa degli strumenti vincolistici. Questi ultimi, però, si sono dimostrati incapaci di far fronte alle conseguenze negative derivanti dall’abbandono...

The increasing attention to climate changes have led national Governments to design environmental tax policies able to face environmental problems and their associated economic consequences like as a negative change of GDP. The environmental taxation in particular is considered a powerful...

This paper discusses the case for reforming the actual mechanism for charging water abstractions for hydropower production in Italy and proposes to introduce a performance-based environmental fee. This should be able, on the one hand, to internalize the environmental costs that hydropower...

The debate around green fiscal reform has been going on for more than 20 years in Europe. However, to this day the focus has been mainly (or almost completely) concentrated on national fiscal systems, while the local dimension has been largely ignored. Environmental taxes, or at least some of...

This article illustrates the result of a study based on the life-cycle costing technique applied to urban waste management in a typical Italian setting, in order to discuss the economic and ecological foundations of a management paradigm inspired by the "zero-waste" philosophy. We identify...