Status and Prospects of Pay

8/14/2019 Status and Prospects of Pay

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Waste Management 28 (2008) 28092814

0956-053X/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2008.07.008

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Waste Management

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1. Intro duc tion

Ever more strin gent legal pro visions in the envi ron men taleld but also grow ing con cerns about resources con sump tion andeco nomic devel op ments have become driv ers for an increas ingnum ber of coun tries to work towards a reduc tion of the amountof solid waste sent to land lls and to enhance diver sion and recy-cling. Efforts to lower the over all waste quan tity and to attain ahigher sen sitiv ity for indi vid ual waste gen er ation among the cit i-zens are mean while notice able in munic ipal ities all over Europe.

Explor ing the dif fer ent mea sures that can be effec tively help ingthe pro cess has prompted many of them to also recon sider thenanc ing mech anisms for waste man age ment and give a greatermean ing to eco nomic instru ments in their envi ron men tal pol icy.By tra di tion, many places funded their waste ser vices from gen eraltax pay ments or lev ies, which often did not pro vide for any linkbetween the actual costs for waste dis posal and indi vid ual wastepro duc tion. This approach gave people very little moti va tion tocare about the quan tity of their pro duced waste.

A strat egy that receives grow ing rec og ni tion under the goalof waste reduc tion is the re alisa tion of dif fer en ti ated fee sys temswhere the costs for waste man age ment are more pro por tion allyallo cated to the waste pro duc ers in accor dance with the amount ofwaste they set out for col lec tion. For house holds this means thatthey are obliged to pay for the obtained waste ser vices just theway they do for any other util ity they receive. In practice this isfacil itated through an inter play of the three prin cipal com po nentsand their incor po ra tion into the actual pro vision of waste ser vices.These com po nents are (a) iden ti ca tion of the waste gen er ator,

as a vehi cle to attain account abil ity, (b) mea sure ment of the gen-er ated waste or obtained ser vice deter min ing the scale (units) ofindi vid ual con tri bu tion to the dis posal costs and (c) unit pric ing,as the means to con vert the indi vid ual con tri bu tion into a cor re-spond ing charge. Such form of direct unit pric ing rea lised for thedif fer ent types of gen er ated waste works as a nan cial incen tive tomin imise over all waste pro duc tion and divert an increased portionof recy cla ble mate rials away from the con ven tional routes forwaste dis posal. Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT), which has become thegeneric term for this approach, implies that this strat egy is rst ofall meant to increase the eco nomic pressure espe cially on the partof those house holds whose waste gen er ation and dis posal behav-iour gen er ate the larg est impact to soci ety and the envi ron ment.The rst and fore most observed effect fol low ing the adop tion

Status and prospects of pay-as-you-throw in Europe A review of pilot researchand implementation studies

Jan Reichenbach *

INTECUS GmbH, Waste Man age ment and Envi ron ment-Inte grat ing Man age ment, Po hlandstr. 17, D-01309 Dres den, Ger many

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Accepted 17 July 2008Available online 27 September 2008

Over the past 20 years, sig ni cant advances have been made in devel op ing effi cient schemes to chargehouse holds for their actual waste gen er ation. Via ble fee mod els and tech ni cal solu tions which are appli-ca ble to dif fer ent envi ron ments and pro vide waste gen er ators with indi vid ual incen tives for waste diver-sion efforts have increased the rec ogni tion of pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) as an effec tive instru ment forrecy cling-ori ented waste man age ment and nanc ing. On this basis, PAYT has become a practical real ity inan increas ing num ber of coun tries in Europe. Even coun tries with tra di tional res er va tions for direct charg-ing have started to make con sid er ation of PAYT in the revi sion of their national pol icy pro grammes. Asit uational anal ysis per formed at the Euro pean level showed that detailed insights regard ing the con cretereac tions, red ags and wider ben ets inher ent to such scheme may still have to be fur ther dis persed inorder to over come the cave ats on PAYT and even tu ally adopt the approach on a larger scale. Claims thatthe results of PAYT appli ca tions are only local in mean ing can be dis proved as many of the devel op mentsbear universal char ac ter and can be ver ied even for larger ter ri to ries using such schemes in dif fer entways. Includ ing results from an inter na tional research co-oper ation and com par ative stud ies con ductedin Ger many, this arti cle exam ines the state-of-the-art of PAYT and shades light onto some of the gen er-ally observed impli ca tions of its imple men ta tion. In con clu sion, an out look on the fur ther poten tials andprop aga tion of this scheme is given.

2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Tel.: +49 351 318230; fax: +49 351 31823 33.E-mail address: in te cus.dres den@in te cus.de
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of PAYT is an increase of recy cling activ ity, ide ally cou pled withefforts to achieve a reduc tion in over all waste gen er ation.

2. Evo lu tion of PAYT in Europe

From the pub lica tion of EEC direc tive 75/442/EEC as the for malstart ing point of the Euro pean waste pol icy in 1975, it took many

years until crit ical neces si ties to attain the goals of waste reduc-tion and diver sion from land ll ing were gen er ally rec og nized andgiven a for mal backup through leg isla tion. It was not before 1991that a for mu la tion was nally included in the above waste frame-work direc tive in which it was stated that part of the costs notcov ered by rev enues from mate rial reuse must be recov ered basedon the pol luter-pays prin ciple. Arti cle 15 of this direc tive for mu-lates that waste man age ment costs must be borne either from theholder who gives waste to a col lec tion ser vice or waste pro cess-ing com pany, or from the pro ducer of the prod uct cre at ing thewaste. Although this stip u la tion does not go fur ther than plac inga gen eral respon sibil ity for waste man age ment costs to the wastegen er ator, it implies that the bur den for man ag ing the waste shallrst of all be charged to the per son who has actu ally been thecause for it. By the time that this clause became an offi cial pol icy,var iable rate pric ing in waste man age ment was not to be inventedany more, as, e.g., the City of San Fran cisco in the US had prac ticeda kind of PAYT scheme since 1932, whereas Aus tria had startedimple ment ing the prin ciple of indi vid ual waste charg ing in 1945already ( Cornell Waste Man age ment Insti tute, 2001; NYC Round-ta ble Four, 2000 ).

How ever, sig ni cant advances in apply ing PAYT in Europedid not com mence much ear lier than 20 years ago. At that time,tran spon der tech nol ogy for tam per ing-proof elec tronic iden ti-ca tion became avail able for waste col lec tion ser vices, allow ingthe devel op ment of effi cient PAYT solu tions that can also work indensely pop ulated urban areas, which often do not have indi vid-ually assigned waste con tain ers. This has nally opened the wayfor var iable waste charg ing to become a real ity in an increas ingnum ber of dif fer ent envi ron ments. It is a mat ter of fact thoughthat the nan cial mech anisms adopted by the Euro pean coun triesfor house hold waste man age ment are still very dif fer ent. One endin this spec trum are sys tems which are com pletely tax-based yet,with Great Brit ain deliv er ing an exam ple for a leg isla tion whichdenies house holds until now an eco nomic incen tive for indi vid-ual waste reduc tion through the appli ca tion of a waste-spe ciccharg ing mech anism. On the other end can be found solu tionsthat involve a fully waste gen er ation-ori ented and in divid ualisedcharg ing, with Swit zer land and Lux em bourg pro vid ing prom inentexam ples where such schemes have reached total ter ri to rial cov-er age.

It is the municipal author ity over waste col lec tion in most Euro-pean coun tries which is, rst of all, requir ing the cre ation of anappro pri ate frame work in order to allow the pol luter-pays-prin ci-ple to come to a break through on the local ground. Coun tries likeDen mark, France, Italy and the Neth er lands have found solu tionson the basis that national leg isla tion is detail ing or giv ing guid ancehow to design and rate the level of a waste charge. Other coun triessuch as Ger many and Bel gium have com ple mented national leg is-la tion with regional or fed eral states spe cic reg u la tion on wasteman age ment and basic prin ciples for the appli ca tion of charges.Research has con rmed that the inte gra tion of pol luter respon si-bil ity in national leg isla tion, backed by stip u la tions as to a pos si-ble nan cial mech anism for its enforce ment, are req ui sites whichoften prompted the ini ti ation of pilot tri als and full-scale pro-grammes to practice PAYT and reduce resid ual waste amounts anddis posal costs in this way ( Bilitew ski et al., 2004 ). Inter est ing in

this respect is the fact that most of the acces sion coun tries join ingthe Euro pean Union since 2004 and 2007 did inte grate the prin ci-

ple of user fees as the basis for their waste man age ment nanc ingin their new waste leg isla tion. In some coun tries, such as Poland,this also includes the oppor tu nity for waste col lec tion com pa niesand house holds to nego ti ate ser vice con tracts indi vid ually.

By now, the recy cling objec tives of the Euro pean waste pol icyand positive expe riences col lected in the places where PAYT hasalready been adopted seem to have become con vinc ing argu ments

for the some what con ser va tive states to also start putt ing their pol-icy and struc tures for waste man age ment under scru tiny and dis-cuss the idea to change waste dis posal behav iour with the help ofeco nomic incen tives.

Late exam ples are France and Ireland, where the gov ern mentsrecently revised national pol icy pro grammes in order to free theway for a stron ger con sid er ation of PAYT for municipal waste man-age ment. The French gov ern ment, being crit is ised of doing toolittle to reduce the growth of waste aris ings and hav ing ignored fora long time the rec om men da tions put for ward regard ing nationalreg u la tion and imple men ta tion of eco nomic instru ments to min i-mise waste gen er ation, came up even tu ally in 2005 with an envi-ron men tal char ter which incor po rated the prin ciple of pre ven tionand the pol luter-pays prin ciple for the rst time in the French con-sti tu tion ( http://www.as sem ble ena tio nale.fr/12/dos siers/char-te_en vironn ement.asp ). The new pol icy drew stron ger atten tionon already exist ing appli ca tions of PAYT in France and led to a sig-ni cant increase in the num ber of municipal cor po ra tions begin-ning to study the pos sibil ities and effects of adopt ing this approachor exper iment ing in this direc tion.

Ireland, which was tra di tion ally rely ing on land ll ing and atnanc ing mech anisms in waste man age ment, made even moresubstantial pro gress at that time. One of the remark able achieve-ments is the growth of recy cling, now reach ing 40% of the col-lected waste com pared to a rate of land lled mate rial of 90% in2000 ( Irish Pres idency of the EU, 2004 ). After invest ing in a bet tercol lec tion infra struc ture, which brought a con nec tion to selec tivecol lec tion and waste diver sion pro grammes to more than half ofthe pop ula tion within a few years, the envi ron men tal min isterdeclared the year 2005 as the begin ning of var iable waste charg-ing based on indi vid ual waste gen er ation ( http://www.enn.com/eco sys tems/arti cle/12740 ). What fol lowed this dec lara tion was theintro duc tion of weight-based charges for house holds in numer ousmunic ipal ities and another sig ni cant drop of the waste amountsfor warded to nal dis posal.

Even in Great Brit ain where waste charges are still con sti tu-tion ally banned and a cam paign to make waste bins iden ti ablewith micro-chips made furi ous head lines, a gen eral under stand-ing that pay ing for the amount of gen er ated waste will makehouse holds think more thor oughly about avoid ance of resid ualwaste has nally started to gain ground. Charg ing for waste is nowopenly dis cussed as one option to help com mu nity coun cils meetthe chal lenges lying ahead of them. A some how sim ilar sit uationexists in Greece, where waste charg ing is still based on a at ratesys tem, but as recy cling rates were grow ing only slowly over thelast few years, PAYT was put in the polit ical par ties agenda for therst time in 2006.

3. Appli ca tion expe ri ences

In coun tries where PAYT has already made it to practical appli-ca tions, it is seen that not a sin gle scheme but rather a num berof dif fer ent charge mod els and tech ni cal options exist for mak inghouse holds pay accord ing to their con tri bu tion to waste gen er a-tion. Gen er ally, a vol ume- or weight-based account ing and unitpric ing can be imple mented, whereby local author ities usu allyhave it at their dis cre tion to exam ine which solu tion matches

best with local con di tions and will be the one nally applied. Thedeter mi na tion of a fee struc ture that clearly reects the dif fer ent
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cost com po nents of waste ser vices, while ensur ing that the mar-ginal expenses for waste man age ment and ser vices are ade quatelycov ered and still an incen tive be offered to house holds to reducetheir waste, is often the most diffi cult issue to be dealt with in thisrespect. The adop tion of effi cient pro ce dures at this point wouldrequire, how ever, many coun tries in Europe to rst improve the

anal ysis of their waste man age ment-spe cic costs and imple mentfull-cost account ing. Find ing good and fair com bina tions of xedand var iable fee com po nents that even tu ally form the indi vid ualwaste charge of a house hold will then be another cru cial fac torfor the accep tance and long-term suc cess of PAYT. Includ ing addi-tional tech ni cal arrange ments for the iden ti ca tion of the wastegen er ator and the mea sure ment of his waste, it can be ensuredthat very effec tive waste man age ment sys tems can be installed inalmost all envi ron ments ( Fig. 1 ).

Within the spec trum of sys tems cur rently in use, bin iden ti ca-tion is by far the most pop ular option for munic ipal ities and wasteman age ment asso ciations in Europe. For this approach to work,it is vital to have a good sys tem for bin allo ca tion, par tic u larly indensely inhab ited, multi-fam ily areas, to ensure account abil ity for

the waste gen er ated. Pos sible solu tions include indi vid ually lockedbins, locked con tainer boxes and wire cages set up for a knowncir cle of users. Not to be ignored aside from the invest ment andmain te nance costs for these instal la tions, is the issue of the morediffi cult acces sibil ity, which may increase the time needed for haul-ing pro cesses under such arrange ments. An expan sion of the haul-ing time per con tainer site by up to 40% has already been seen as apos sible con se quence ( Bilitew ski et al., 2004 ).

An alter na tive to a col lec tion sys tem with bin iden ti ca tion isuser iden ti ca tion for which the most com mon tech ni cal solu tionis deliv ered in the form of so-called cham ber sys tems. Also knownas waste lock or lock hop per instal la tion, these are waste stor agedevices that require users to pass their waste through a spe cialfeed ing cham ber. Users get reg istered while access ing this cham-

ber and their amount of waste depos ited is recorded. The respon si-ble author ity then either bills the user or the sys tem itself deducts

a cor re spond ing amount from pre paid cred its. These sys tems aremean while oper ated in envi ron ments rang ing from large hous ingblocks through shop ping malls to sin gle-fam ily house areas, andallow the prin ciple of PAYT to be applied on a full-scale.

The proven ben et and strength of PAYT as com pared to anycon ven tional form of charg ing house holds for waste ser vices is

the incen tive that this approach pro vides for divert ing waste mate-rial that can be for warded to recy cling away from the col lec tionof mixed resid ual waste end ing up at land lls or incin er ators, andthe sav ings that can be obtained through opti mised col lec tion.Although each com po nent of a waste man age ment sys tem has itsown con tri bu tion and effec tive ness on the amount of diverted andsaved waste, there are some gen eral pat terns inher ent to any caseof PAYT imple men ta tion. Instead of com par ing the out come of dif-fer ent appli ca tions, these char acter istic fea tures shall be fur therexplained next.

As the most evi dent and instantly notice able con se quence ofPAYT intro duc tion, the reduc tion of col lected resid ual waste in con-

junc tion with an almost pro por tional growth of the quan ti ties col-lected in sys tems for source-sep arated mate rials can be observed.

This is par tic u larly the case where charg ing struc tures allow recov-ery of the cost of unlim ited recy cling and do not make restric tionsas to the amount for warded to recy cling. Backed by a suffi cient col-lec tion infra struc ture, this will encour age the diver sion of wastemate rial (for which options other than the dis posal via resid ualwaste col lec tion exist) into the respec tive sys tems for selec tivecol lec tion. How ever, short age of space and stor age capac ities forsource-sep arated waste in the house holds, as well as poorly devel-oped or uncom fort able sys tems for selec tive waste col lec tion, werefound to have a neg ative inu ence on these efforts.

Var ious stud ies com par ing the sit uation in dif fer ent Euro peanmunic ipal ities before and after the intro duc tion of PAYT in manyinstances reported source-sep arated waste mate rial in selec tivecol lec tion sys tems to rise at rates of 70% and more ( Bilitew ski et

al., 2004 ). This relates mostly to sales pack ag ing, kitchen wasteand paper, which have tra di tion ally been tar get mate rials of selec-

PAYT

(accountability to the waste generator thru)

User identification B in identification

Volume basedaccounting

Weight basedaccounting

Volume basedaccounting

Weight basedaccounting

Chamber system(volume chamber )

Chamber systemwith weighing

Ident-weighingsystem

Pre-paid system

Individuallyassigned bin

Collectivelyassigned bin

Ident system

individual scheme

routine scheme

tag, sticker or token

pre-paid sack

Fig. 1. Prin cipal alter na tives for imple men ta tion of PAYT.
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tive col lec tion and recy cling pro grammes in Europe. Much of thesemate rials have nev er the less always remained in larger quan ti tiesin resid ual waste. Ger many insti tuted the col lec tion of pack ag-ing mate rials on an almost national level since the early 1990s bymeans of the so-called dual sys tem. This sys tem guar an tees pay-ment of pack ag ing dis posal through licence fees and hence ren dersthe selec tive col lec tion as a quasi-free col lec tion ser vice for the

house hold. Charg ing waste ser vices in con junc tion with resid ualwaste col lec tion, together with the per cep tion of a free-of-chargecol lec tion and dis posal sys tem for re cyc lables, pro vide that divert-ing the recy cla ble portion of the waste from the resid ual dis posalroutes would indeed pay off in a PAYT sys tem as nan cial sav ingsfor the house hold. The closer the link of the waste charge to theresid ual waste gen er ated and actual amount of resid ual waste ser-vices received, the higher becomes the ten dency of the people toengage in source sep ara tion and recy cling efforts. This trend canbe observed even where only a small portion of the waste charge isdirectly con nected to the amount of waste and/or received ser vices(Table 1 ).

Charg ing on a fully var iable basis appeared to bring a fur therreduc tion of the resid ual waste amount and increase of sep aratelycol lected re cyc lables, but at the same time incor po rates an unnec-es sary high risk of occur rences where people do not use waste ser-vices any longer and engage in unwanted dis posal prac tices instead.The inclu sion of a xed fee or man da tory min imum of pay ableser vices in the waste charge is, there fore, a rec om mended pro ce-

dure for any PAYT con cept. In which area of their waste gen er ationpeople exactly start chang ing their dis posal behav iour in a sys temthat charges them for obtained resid ual waste ser vices while offer-ing the col lec tion of re cyc lables for a lower or zero charge, can beseen by com par ing the col lected waste streams before and aftersys tem intro duc tion. A good illus tra tion of the typ ical reac tion ofhouse holds is pro vided by the waste ow anal ysis that was per-formed in one of the pilot areas for PAYT in the city of Dres den,cap ital of the Free State of Sax ony ( Fig. 2 ).

The change of the totally col lected waste quan tity and the shiftthat occurs away from the resid ual waste col lec tion towards thesys tems offered for source-sep arated re cyc lables can be seen in par-tic u lar. The total amount of col lected house hold waste had reacheda quan tity of about 319 kg per per son per year before the intro duc-tion of indi vid ual waste charges, but dropped by nearly 12% (i.e.,to 281 kg per per son per year) within only six months ( INTECUS, 1998 ). Mate rials cat egorized as waste belong ing to the organic frac-tion showed to have the high est rate of reduc tion in over all wastegen er ation, a devel op ment which was sup ported by the expla na-tion that stron ger efforts for the home com po sting of these wasteshad taken place. The quan tity of waste com po nents cat egorized asnon-recy cla ble resid ual mate rials in the over all waste stream alsodropped sig ni cantly, whereby the observed 14% decline exceedsslightly the 812% mar gin ( Cornell Waste Man age ment Insti tute,

Fig. 2. Waste ow devel op ments as the result of intro duc tion of PAYT in a pilot area in the city of Dres den ( INTECUS, 1998 ).

Table 1Aver age waste quan ti ties col lected in Ger man munic ipal ities as a func tion of the charg ing mech anism applied to resid ual waste ser vices ( Einz mann et al., 2001 )

Charg ing model applied to resid ual waste

Kilogram per capita per year

Collected resid ual waste

Collectedre cyc lables

Fixed or at rate 181.7 121.0Fixed rate charged on a num ber of pick ups 165.6 131.5Multi-com po nent charge with var iable partlinked to the actual num ber of pick ups

159.9 137.6
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2001 ) which is gen er ally acknowl edged as the range of achiev-able avoid ance in this waste cat egory; how ever, this may ndan expla na tion also in amounts that were then for warded to thebulky-waste col lec tion. Intro duc ing new tech ni cal solu tions forPAYT imple men ta tion (such as locked bins and cham ber sys tems)often comes at the costs of a restricted recep tiv ity of the waste con-tain ers for large-sized items and more mate rial of that kind being

hence for warded to the bulky-waste col lec tion sys tems. Occur-rences of waste being exported to outside areas or inten tion allythrown into another col lec tion sys tem or the envi ron ment wererather occa sional and, quite on the con trary to often prop agatedor antic ipated fears and risk per cep tions, not found to rise instinc-tively in fre quency and scale. In the afore men tioned case ana lysed,only a slight increase of lay-bys from 6.2 to 6.7 kg per capita peryear was observed; how ever, with out the use of locked bins andcon tainer sites, cou pled with an area-wide PAYT cov er age, the sit u-ation could have been dif fer ent. Accom pa ny ing tech ni cal mea suresand infor ma tion sen sitiz ing the people on sys tem goals and con se-quences of wrong ful con duct are, there fore, of crit ical impor tancewhenever it comes to the intro duc tion of PAYT so to min imise indi-vid ual waste charg ing encour aged mis be hav iour.

The afore men tioned shift from the waste amount for warded toresid ual waste col lec tion to higher quan ti ties of source-sep aratedre cyc lables in the Dres den pilot of the year 1996 con cerned mainlythe frac tions of selec tively col lected kitchen waste and pack ag ingmate rials. The curb side col lec tion of re cyc lables yielded a growthof about 10%, whereas bring sys tems received almost twice asmuch recy cla ble mate rials as before. Look ing just at the col lec tionof kitchen and other bio waste, an increase of more than 28% hasbeen observed. On the other hand resid ual waste col lec tion underthe PAYT scheme came to only 63% of what had been for warded tonal dis posal just before the pilot was launched ( INTECUS, 1998 ). Agen eral obser vation from such pilots is that the increase of source-sep arated waste paper and glass (as tra di tional com po nents ofselec tive col lec tion sys tems) is usu ally not that high as com paredto other frac tions ( Bilitew ski et al., 2004 ). In prin ciple, the samecan be observed for bring sys tems, as com pared to curb side col lec-tion, whereby the com fort of the lat ter is a sig ni cant advan tagefor cit izens engage ment in waste diver sion pro grammes. In orderto attain the full ben ets of PAYT in terms of resid ual waste reduc-tion, such sys tems should there fore be launched ide ally in com bi-na tion with the inten sica tion of curb side schemes for selec tivecol lec tion.

The devel op ments described above and the ben ets fol low inga PAYT intro duc tion are not just vis ible on the micro or pilot-scalelevel, but can also be seen on a ter ri to rial scale. In terms of area-wide PAYT dis per sion, e.g., over 90% of the munic ipal ities in theFree State of Sax ony are using such arrange ments in one way oranother, com pared to nearly 60% in the State of Ba den-Wurt tem-berg and less than 20% in the State of Hesse. In com par ison, thetotal house hold waste col lec tion in the State of Hesse in 2002 cameto, on aver age, 470 kg per capita per year ( Hes sis ches Min iste rium fr Um welt, Lnd lichen Raum und Verb rau chers chutz, 2003 ),while a total of only 400 kg and 366 kg per capita had been col-lected in the same year in Ba den-Wurt tem berg ( Min iste rium fr Umwelt und Ver kehr Ba den-Wrt tem berg, 2003 ) and in Sax ony(Sch sis ches Lande samt fr Um welt und Ge ologie (LfUG), 20032005 ), respec tively, whereas for resid ual waste col lec tion alone, aquan tity of 193 kg per capita per year was estab lished for the Stateof Hesse ( Hes sis ches Min iste rium fr Um welt, Lnd lichen Raum und Verb rau chers chutz, 2003 ) as opposed to only 130 kg in Ba den-Wurt tem berg ( Min iste rium fr Um welt und Ver kehr Ba den-Wrt-tem berg, 2003 ) and 145 kg in Sax ony ( Sch sis ches Lande samt fr Umwelt und Ge ologie (LfUG), 20032005 ). Differ ences in the ter ri-

to rial and waste man age ment infra struc tures of these three statesmight explain the mixed out come, as far as the col lec tion of dif-

fer ent recy cla ble mate rial per capita is con cerned. How ever, theyhardly jus tify the huge dif fer ences in resid ual waste amounts andtotal house hold waste gen er ation, since it was found that wastedis posal behav iour of people in inner city areas tends to be thesame in the ones living in the city out skirts and sur round ings oncea PAYT sys tem is set in force.

5. Con clu sions and out look

Many rea sons have been found for hav ing waste charg ing in divid-ualised on the basis of waste gen eration and diver sion prac tices. Insome of the front-run ning coun tries such as Ger many and the Neth-er lands, PAYT has very often been called for in the past as an instru-ment to address cit izens con cerns and demands for fair treat mentin response to ever increas ing charge bur dens. Higher trans par encyas to the indi vid ual cost allo cation for waste man age ment ser vicespro vided may also be a cru cial driver for a wider dis per sion of thePAYT approach in Europe in the future. For this, full-cost account ingin waste man age ment would have to be installed rst as a gen eralreq uisite in the respec tive coun tries. The require ments for full-costrecov ery and pro mo tion of recy cling by eco nomic instru ments arelikely to be the fa rest-reach ing obli gations that can be achieved,should waste nanc ing ever become sub ject of a related Euro pean-wide leg islation. This assess ment is derived from the fact that wasteman age ment nanc ing will always remain a polit ically sen sitiveissue and local con ditions and pref er ences must be given due con-sid eration in the local waste man age ment design accord ing to theprin ciple of sub sid iar ity. The rec ogni tion of PAYT as a high-rankedand abso lutely rec om mend able option for con form ing to the tar-get of a recy cling-minded soci ety, can be also seen in the Euro peanCom mis sions the matic strat egy on waste pre ven tion and recy cling(Euro pean Com mis sion, 2003 ), as well as through many prom isingappli cations and inno vative schemes in practice. The instal lation ofmany of them did not just end with a trans par ent bill ing, reducedwaste amounts and increased diver sion and recy cling as the onlyben ets, as adopt ing mod ern PAYT solu tions mean while con nectsto the chance to attain con sid erable advan ta ges in the waste man-age ment logis tics and adjust the plan ning of ser vices on the actualdemand, with the con sequent sav ings off set ting the costs for ini tialinvest ments by many times ( Bilitew ski et al., 2004 ). The best exam-ples are large press- con tainer solu tions fea tur ing cham ber sys temsfor the imple men ta tion of PAYT in logis tically expen sive areas; withonly one instal lation of that kind, a large num ber of sin gle con tain-ers and pickup oper ations can be replaced and the cor re spond ingcost saved. This, in turn, enables con trol over gen erally ris ing wasteman age ment costs and allows people to prot from a sta ple or evenreduced charg ing that ben ets from saved costs for nal waste dis-posal and the rev enues from the sale of the addi tional sec ond arymate rials col lected under PAYT. All aspects together have con trib-uted that the reluc tance to con sider sig ni cant changes to con ven-tional nanc ing mod els has already come to an end in Europe, giv ingindi vid ual waste charg ing based on the prin ciple PAYT good per spec-tives for fur ther devel op ment in the future.

Ref er ences

Bilitew ski, B., Wer ner, P., Rei chen bach, J. (Ed.), 2004. Hand book on the Imple men-ta tion of Pay-As-You-Throw as a Tool for Urban Waste Man age ment. Be it rgezur Ab fallwirts chaft. Band 39, Forum fr Ab fallwirts chaft und Alt lasten, Pir na,Ger many.

Cornell Waste Man age ment Insti tute, 2001. Round ta ble Four: Pay as you throw forLarge Munic ipal ities, Decem ber 11, 2000. Final Report. Cen ter for the Envi ron-ment, Cor nell Uni ver sity Ith aca, NY, USA

Euro pean Com mis sion, 2003. Tak ing Sus tain able Use of Resources For ward: A The-matic Strat egy on the Pre ven tion and Recy cling of Waste. Com mu ni ca tion fromthe Com mis sion to the Coun cil, the Euro pean Par liament, the Euro pean Eco-nomic and Social Com mit tee and the Com mit tee of the Regions. {SEC(2005)1681} {SEC(2005) 1682}, and (COM(2003)301 dated 25.7.2003), Brus sels, Bel-gium.
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