Municipal Waste Management Initiatives

Municipal Waste Management Initiatives

Gnarly Tree Sustainability Institute Principal Associate Kenneth Richards is leading a team at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs to develop a new analysis of policy instruments for municipal solid waste management. The project makes a unique contribution to the field by specifying how the choice of policy instruments in waste management differs from other environmental applications.  First, the choice of policy instrument is highly dependent upon the choice of waste management technologies – e.g., incineration, recycling, landfill, or composting – that the municipality employs.  Second, municipalities often have multiple goals for the solid waste management programs, often a mix of sanitary disposal, energy generation, recycle maximization, material recovery, air and water pollution minimization, and virgin material use minimization.  The optimal choice of policy tools – inevitably a mix of several policy tools – depends on the combination of technologies and goals.  The teams’ new approach, based on GTSI’s unique framework of policy instrument analysis, will help solid waste managers and policymakers better understand the merits of available approaches.

Services: Policy Instrument Choice and Design