Premium
Economic Impacts of a National Deposit Law: Cost Estimates and Policy Questions
Author(s) -
LESSER WILLIAM,
MADHAVAN ANANTH
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of consumer affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.582
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1745-6606
pISSN - 0022-0078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-6606.1987.tb00192.x
Subject(s) - legislation , economic impact analysis , container (type theory) , economics , business , law , public economics , political science , engineering , mechanical engineering , microeconomics
This paper uses available evidence to project the impacts of national mandatory deposit legislation for beverage containers. Container litter should decline by 70 percent with 70 percent of redeemed containers recycled. This comes at an estimated cost of over $3 billion annually. Due to these high costs, alternative approaches should be evaluated first, with a national bottle bill adopted only as a last resort and then only with broad public support. Along with the impacts of the law, its operational characteristics require more research attention. Several directions for policy analysis are identified.