The 2nd Stocks Essay Contest – Youngstown State University – Copyright Michael Gans (2010)
THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF PLASTIC WASTE REDUCTION POLICY:
REDUCING OCEANIC AND LANDFILL WASTE ACCUMULATION
By Michael Gans
A vast amount of plastic is consumed and discarded every day. Most of it goes into landfills,
however a small percentage is recycled, and another percentage is misplaced. According to
researchers, “In the United States, 25 billion pounds of plastic goes unaccounted for each year.
(Doucette)” This is plastic that is not deposited in a landfill or recycled. Where does this plastic
go? The answer can vary, but typically, it winds up in places where it doesn’t belong. That is
where it will stay for millions of years, releasing toxins such as DDTs and PCBs. Large amounts
of not only the United States’ plastic, but the world’s plastic will end up in the ocean.
This oceanic waste is a silent threat that is unknown to many. The largest known
collection of oceanic plastic is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and was only recently
discovered in 1997. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a mass of suspended particulate plastic
matter. It spans twice the size of Texas, and is approximated to contain roughly ten million tons
of plastic waste. (Doucette)
Many people will remain unconcerned even after this information is more widely
distributed. Seemingly distant and unimportant to many people, scientists fear that this silent
bomb may have a large negative impact in the not so distant future. The small particulate plastic
matter is easily ingested by ocean wildlife, including consumable fish. According to Richard
Thompson, a marine biologist, “When fish and mammals ingest micro-plastics from the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch, the chemical toxins concentrated in the waste lodge themselves in the
animal’s fatty tissues, accumulating at ever increasing levels the higher you go up the food
chain.” For humans, this means ingesting a concentrated soup of chemical toxins every time they
bite into a piece of fish from the affected area. The phytoplankton population is also seeing a
negative effect from the accumulation of plastic. “According to a 2006 report from the U.N.
Environment Programme, every pound of plankton in the central Pacific Ocean is offset by about
6 pounds of litter.” (Sullivan)
Further exploration is being performed on the immense collection of plastic particulate
waste. According to New York Times journalist Colin Sullivan, a group of professionals,
including sailors, scientists, and government officials are on a mission to better understand the
garbage patch. The title of the mission is “Project Kaisei.” According to Doug Woodring, the cofounder of the exploration, "Anything that we're promoting is going to come back to expanded
recycling programs."
There are a number of different angles that can be considered when discussing a solution
to the waste accumulation problem, one of them being an oceanic waste cleanup act. The
Oceanic Waste Cleanup Act would involve the physical removal of the material plastic waste
that is suspended in the water. One benefit of this policy is that it would directly remove the
waste and toxins from the affected problem area. The actual physical removal of the waste would
show the most direct benefit to the sea life and water quality. Other beneficiaries if this policy
were enacted would include all ocean based fisheries, who will be producing an output of
healthier and more abundant seafood, and all consumers of oceanic seafood products. The major
disadvantage to this policy is the immense cost and difficulty. The filtration equipment and
transportation of the equipment will incur a very large direct cost. The major issue in question, as
with every policy that will incur a cost, is will the benefits seen to the fisheries, seafood
consumers, and ocean fauna outweigh the immense social cost of the ocean water filtration
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The 2nd Stocks Essay Contest – Youngstown State University – Copyright Michael Gans (2010)
equipment? In my opinion, the net social benefit of this policy would be minimal, if not negative.
Also, due to the immense size of the problem area, time will be a factor. It will take massive
amounts of man and machine power to clean this area that is twice the size of Texas. Another
factor discussed by Woodring is the feasibility of cleaning the particulate waste. He states that,
“Cleaning up the bigger piles of trash, which float in random clumps over long distances above
and beneath the surface, is possible but may not solve the core issue. And sweeping thousands of
miles of ocean for molecular litter would be expensive and possibly unrealistic.” Others involved
with the project agree with Woodring on the difficulty of a cleanup act. According to Holly
Bamford, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine debris
program, “a cleanup operation would have to address how to collect smaller plastics that can bob
on the ocean surface or collect beneath it like streamers or confetti. And it would have to cope
with jurisdictional conflicts among international parties.”(Sullivan)
Another policy that will indirectly attack both the oceanic waste problem, as well as
reducing landfill waste accumulation, is an effective nationwide recycling program. This policy
would not concentrate on the current waste buildup in the ocean, but would instead prevent
future waste accumulation. There are also other benefits to be seen with a nationwide recycling
program besides decreasing water pollution. Recycling plastics reduces the amount of new
plastic or polymers that need to be produced. As well as being cost effective, production using
recycled plastics causes less air borne carbon emissions over all. Also caused by reducing the
amount of virgin polymers being produced, a reduction in crude oil consumption will be incurred
in the plastics industry. The plastics industry as of now uses approximately 3.4 million barrels a
day of crude oil. (Doucette)
Although a large amount of the oceanic plastic waste is not of United States origin, a
considerable portion of it is. It is not a realistic proposal to incur a worldwide recycling program.
Although this policy will not remove the current waste from the ocean, it will prevent a large
portion of future marine waste accrual with U.S derivation. Other benefits would be seen relating
to the current issue of finite American landfill space. However, though this would be an effective
policy, cost is again the main issue.
Enacting this policy would be based on household willingness to pay for recycling
programs. The funding for this policy, if enacted would likely be produced through taxation. An
incentive for individuals to support recycling would include raising, or enacting local volume
based curbside garbage pickup costs. If the increased cost in garbage pickup outweighs the cost
incurred through taxation for the curbside recycling program, it will be easier to get citizens on
board with the recycling waste reduction policy. Although drop-off recycling is available in most
urban areas, it is often not utilized for several reasons. A leading cause is simply a lack of
awareness of the existence of the recycling center, as well as a low incentive to recycle. People
in many cases are not willing to exert the extra effort of sorting out the recyclables from the
general refuse, then load them into containers and haul them to the recycling center. Without the
extra incentive of cost reduction from volume based curb-side garbage pickup, the opportunity
cost of time outweighs any direct benefits seen to the individual. (Bohara)
Through a series of research surveys in 2003, an estimation of support for drop off
recycling found that participants who either had a high income, recycled for money, or are
actively involved in organizations that are environmentally supportive had the highest rate of
cooperation. For the other participants, more of an incentive is required for them to become
active in recycling. (Bohara)
Unit based garbage collection in itself should be encouraged or enforced, because just the
desire to reduce the cost of garbage collection, citizens will have more of an urge to recycle.
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The 2nd Stocks Essay Contest – Youngstown State University – Copyright Michael Gans (2010)
Even with this new incentive of reducing waste costs, again, the cost of travel and effort of dropoff recycling must be considered. If the reduction in cost in units of garbage is less than or equal
to the costs involved with drop-off recycling, private net benefits to the individual for recycling,
would be zero.
Another recycling option would be curbside recycling pickup. The costs mostly include
man hours, an increased number of transportation units, and more processing plants. However,
this program will be more influential on individuals. Curbside recycling incurs less private cost
to the individual, because there is no travel expense, and opportunity cost of time is greatly
reduced. However, a tax will be necessary to fund the new costs incurred. Will there be a
reduction in net private costs, and will they outweigh the taxation cost of increased number of
transportation units, man hours and processing plants?
A good example where recycling has not been encouraged, but instead enforced through
law, is current Japan. Japan enacted the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law in 1997. This
law has encouraged local municipalities to enforce unit based garbage pricing, which reduces
Japan’s trash accumulation in landfills. Lack of landfill space in Japan was the primary cause for
enacting this policy. Although Japan is enforcing a high private cost for garbage collection,
citizens are allowed to sort and deposit recyclables for free. However, as I mentioned above, the
cost reduction from reducing the amount of garbage may not outweigh the personal cost to the
individual of personally sorting and transporting the recyclables to the nearest recycling station.
This was the reality in Japan with the initial unit based garbage cost policy. It was not truly
effective until free curbside recyclables pickup was offered. According to the Graduate School of
Economics and Business Administration in Hokkaido University, Japan, the net results of the
policy are as follows: The results of Heckman’s two-step estimation shows that the garbage
pricing strategy combined with recycling pickup has shown a dramatic decrease in waste
accumulation. Also shown in the results, is that changes in cost of each unit of garbage, and
amount of recycling are positively correlated. As municipalities increase the cost of each “bag
and tag” of garbage, the amount of recycling increases accordingly at a constant ratio. (Suwa)
There is no single cure, or silver bullet for waste reduction. I personally feel that unit
based garbage pricing combined with free curbside recycling pickup is one of the most effective
available policies relating to waste reduction. This policy has proven effective in Japan; however
Americans may take a different attitude toward the policy than Japanese citizens. American
citizens may feel that there is not a need for waste reduction; where as Japanese citizens face the
issue of an urgent lack of available landfill space. American citizens are likely to be displeased at
the idea of an increased cost of garbage collection, and are likely to reject the policy.
Bibliography
Bohara, Alok, Arthur Caplan, and Therese Grijalva. "The effect of experience and quantitybased pricing on the valuation of a curbside recycling program." Ecological Economics
64. (2007): 433-43. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.
Doucette, Kitt. "An Ocean of Plastic." Rolling Stone Magazine 1090. (2009): 54-57. Web. 2 Mar.
2010.
Sullivan, Colin. "Recyclers, Scientists Probe Great Pacific Garbage Patch." New York Times
(2009): n. pag. Web. 15 Apr 2010.
Suwa, Tatsuo, and Takehiro Usui. "Estimation of garbage reduction and recycling promotion
under the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law and garbage pricing." Environmental
Economics and Policy Studies 8. (2007): 239-54. Web. 5 Apr 2010.
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