Extended Product Responsibility: An Economic Assessment of Alternative Policies
| dc.creator | Palmer, Karen L. | |
| dc.creator | Walls, Margaret | |
| dc.date | 2017-04-01T17:29:12Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-09T02:59:55Z | |
| dc.description | Extended Product Responsibility embodies the notion that agents along a product chain should share responsibility for the life-cycle environmental impacts of the product, including those associated with ultimate disposal. Extended Producer Responsibility is a narrower concept which places responsibility on producers and focuses primarily on post-consumer waste disposal. Manufacturer "take-back" requirements are the policy lever most often associated with Extended Producer Responsibility. In this paper, we discuss alternative incentive-based policies that are consistent with the objectives of Extended Product and Producer Responsibility. We argue that an upstream combined product tax and recycling subsidy (UCTS) is generally more cost-effective and imposes fewer transactions costs than the take-back approach. We also consider the strengths and weaknesses of a policy not targeted at producers: unit-based pricing of residential waste collection and disposal. We find that this option shows potential for achieving non-trivial reductions in solid waste. Widespread application in the U.S. of a $1.00 charge per 32-gallon bag could reduce total municipal solid waste disposed by approximately 13 percent per year. | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.22004/ag.econ.10830 | |
| dc.identifier | https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/10830/files/dp990012.pdf | |
| dc.identifier | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/10830 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/524502 | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.publisher | ||
| dc.source | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/10830 | |
| dc.title | Extended Product Responsibility: An Economic Assessment of Alternative Policies | |
| dc.type | Text |