IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeeman/v111y2022ics0095069621001364.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is incineration repressing recycling?

Author

Listed:
  • Yamamoto, Masashi
  • Kinnaman, Thomas C.

Abstract

Recycling rates increased rapidly in the United States and across the developed world in the 1980s and 1990s but have remained relatively flat in many countries since about 2005. Could increases in incineration and a possible ”feed the beast” mentality associated with efficient incineration make the recycling of some materials obsolete? In this paper, a conceptual model is delivered to better explain the possible trade-off. The model is then tested using novel data in Japan that includes both unused excess incineration capacity and recycling rates across municipalities and across time. Results suggest that, when controlling for other variables, excess incineration capacity indeed reduces recycling. These results suggest that future planned increases in recycling may be frustrated by increases in incineration.

Suggested Citation

  • Yamamoto, Masashi & Kinnaman, Thomas C., 2022. "Is incineration repressing recycling?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:111:y:2022:i:c:s0095069621001364
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2021.102593
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069621001364
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jeem.2021.102593?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bente Halvorsen, 2008. "Effects of Norms and Opportunity Cost of Time on Household Recycling," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(3), pages 501-516.
    2. Brandon C. Koford & Glenn C. Blomquist & David M. Hardesty & Kenneth R. Troske & Margaret Hughes & Fred Morgan, 2012. "Estimating Consumer Willingness to Supply and Willingness to Pay for Curbside Recycling," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 88(4), pages 745-763.
    3. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    4. Abbott, Andrew & Nandeibam, Shasikanta & O'Shea, Lucy, 2013. "Recycling: Social norms and warm-glow revisited," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 10-18.
    5. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    6. Erik O'Donovan & Miche l L. Collins, 2011. "An Economic Evaluation of Incineration as a Residual Municipal Solid Waste Management Option in Ireland," Trinity Economics Papers tep1811, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    7. Dijkgraaf, Elbert & Vollebergh, Herman R.J., 2004. "Burn or bury? A social cost comparison of final waste disposal methods," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3-4), pages 233-247, October.
    8. Kinnaman, Thomas C. & Shinkuma, Takayoshi & Yamamoto, Masashi, 2014. "The socially optimal recycling rate: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 54-70.
    9. Gradus, Raymond H.J.M. & Nillesen, Paul H.L. & Dijkgraaf, Elbert & van Koppen, Rick J., 2017. "A Cost-effectiveness Analysis for Incineration or Recycling of Dutch Household Plastic Waste," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 22-28.
    10. Ho, Daniel & Imai, Kosuke & King, Gary & Stuart, Elizabeth A., 2011. "MatchIt: Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inference," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 42(i08).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nadezhda Kvasha & Olga Bolotnikova & Ekaterina Malevskaia-Malevich, 2023. "Biotechnological Basis of the Pulp and Paper Industry Circular Economic System," Economies, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Don Fullerton & Thomas C. Kinnaman, 2024. "The Economics of Recycling Heterogeneity," NBER Working Papers 32981, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Asterios Papageorgiou & Anna Björklund & Rajib Sinha, 2024. "Applying material and energy flow analysis to assess urban metabolism in the context of the circular economy," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 28(4), pages 885-900, August.
    4. Balza, Lenin & Gómez Parra, Nicolás & Cuartas, Jorge & Serebrisky, Tomás, 2024. "Infrastructure Services and Early Childhood Development in Latin America and the Caribbean: Water, Sanitation, and Garbage Collection," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13576, Inter-American Development Bank.
    5. Hui Feng & Yirong Li & Renyan Mu & Lei Wu, 2023. "The Impact of Investment Efficiency in the Digital Economy on Urban Waste Reduction: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(24), pages 1-15, December.
    6. Xi Sun & Sophie M. Behr & Merve Kücük, 2024. "Enabling Circular Economy Dynamics in the Plastics and Steel Industries: Perspectives from Multiple Stakeholders," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2093, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Xi Sun, 2023. "The Role of Carbon Pricing in Promoting Material Recycling: A Model of Multi-Market Interactions," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2034, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Jinsong LI & Kenji TAKEUCHI, 2024. "Do Municipal Mergers Promote Recycling?," Discussion papers e-24-002, Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University.
    9. Thomas C. Kinnaman & Masashi Yamamoto, 2023. "Has Incineration Replaced Recycling? Evidence from OECD Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-12, February.
    10. Li, Jinsong & Takeuchi, Kenji, 2023. "Do municipal mergers reduce the cost of waste management? Evidence from Japan," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas C. Kinnaman & Masashi Yamamoto, 2023. "Has Incineration Replaced Recycling? Evidence from OECD Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-12, February.
    2. Kinnaman, Thomas C. & Shinkuma, Takayoshi & Yamamoto, Masashi, 2014. "The socially optimal recycling rate: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 54-70.
    3. Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Vittucci Marzetti, Giuseppe, 2019. "Recycling and Waste Generation: An Estimate of the Source Reduction Effect of Recycling Programs," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 321-329.
    4. Pfister, Naomi & Mathys, Nicole A., 2022. "Waste taxes at work: Evidence from the canton of Vaud in Switzerland," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    5. Broberg, Thomas & Dijkgraaf, Elbert & Meens-Eriksson, Sef, 2022. "Burn or let them bury? The net social cost of producing district heating from imported waste," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    6. Brian Chi-ang Lin & Siqi Zheng & Ankinée Kirakozian, 2016. "One Without The Other? Behavioural And Incentive Policies For Household Waste Management," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 526-551, July.
    7. Luisa Corrado & Andrea Fazio & Alessandra Pelloni, 2020. "Pro-environmental attitudes, local environmental conditions and recycling behavior," Working Paper series 20-21, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, revised Nov 2021.
    8. Vargas Da Cruz,Marcio Jose, 2014. "Do export promotion agencies promote new exporters ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7004, The World Bank.
    9. Damiano Fiorillo & Luigi Senatore, 2020. "Pro-social behaviours, waste concern and recycling behaviour in Italy at the end of the 1990s," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 22(2), pages 127-151, April.
    10. Khudri, Md Mohsan & Hussey, Andrew, 2024. "Breastfeeding and Child Development Outcomes across Early Childhood and Adolescence: Doubly Robust Estimation with Machine Learning," IZA Discussion Papers 17080, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Vargas Da Cruz,Marcio Jose, 2014. "Do export promotion agencies promote new exporters ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7004, The World Bank.
    12. Elbert Dijkgraaf & Raymond Gradus, 2020. "Post-collection Separation of Plastic Waste: Better for the Environment and Lower Collection Costs?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 77(1), pages 127-142, September.
    13. Ellison, Richard B. & Ellison, Adrian B. & Greaves, Stephen P. & Sampaio, Breno, 2017. "Electronic ticketing systems as a mechanism for travel behaviour change? Evidence from Sydney’s Opal card," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 80-93.
    14. Dettmann, E. & Becker, C. & Schmeißer, C., 2011. "Distance functions for matching in small samples," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 1942-1960, May.
    15. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    16. Apps, Patricia & Mendolia, Silvia & Walker, Ian, 2013. "The impact of pre-school on adolescents’ outcomes: Evidence from a recent English cohort," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 183-199.
    17. Tymon Słoczyński, 2015. "The Oaxaca–Blinder Unexplained Component as a Treatment Effects Estimator," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 77(4), pages 588-604, August.
    18. Fatema, Naureen, 2019. "Can land title reduce low-intensity interhousehold conflict incidences and associated damages in eastern DRC?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    19. Michael C. Knaus, 2021. "A double machine learning approach to estimate the effects of musical practice on student’s skills," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 184(1), pages 282-300, January.
    20. Anita Alves Pena, 2015. "The effect of continuing education participation on outcomes of male and female agricultural workers in the USA," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(6), pages 751-776, December.

    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:111:y:2022:i:c:s0095069621001364. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.