This paper develops a utility maximizing model of household choice among garbage disposal, recycling, and littering. The impact of a user fee for garbage collection is modelled for heterogeneous households with different preferences for recycling. The model explains (1) why some households...

This paper provides a broad overview of recent trends in solid waste and recycling, related public policy issues, and the economics literature devoted to these topics. Public attention to solid waste and recycling has increased dramatically over the past decade both in the United States and in...

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...