IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fan/efeefe/vhtml10.3280-efe2012-003007.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The brown side of the green economy: urban garbage and the zero-waste utopia

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Massarutto

Abstract

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 landfill availability as a critical natural capital requiring the adoption of strong sustainability indicators. We argue that the zero-waste approach is neither feasible nor desirable. Instead, strong arguments can be found in favour of a "zero-landfill" strategy, to be achieved through an adequate mix of material and energy recovery.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Massarutto, 2012. "The brown side of the green economy: urban garbage and the zero-waste utopia," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2012(3), pages 81-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:fan:efeefe:v:html10.3280/efe2012-003007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=47099&Tipo=ArticoloPDF
    Download Restriction: Single articles can be downloaded buying download credits, for info: https://www.francoangeli.it/DownloadCredit
    ---><---

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

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Barbara ANTONIOLI & Antonio MASSARUTTO, 2012. "The Municipal Waste Management Sector In Europe: Shifting Boundaries Between Public Service And The Market," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 83(4), pages 505-532, December.
    2. Antonio Massarutto & Francesco Silvestri, 2015. "Free municipal waste trade as an incentive to recycling. A theoretical study," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2015(3), pages 89-107.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies

    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:fan:efeefe:v:html10.3280/efe2012-003007. 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: Stefania Rosato (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/sommario.aspx?IDRivista=10 .

    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.