| Title | Description |
| The Economics of Exhaustible Resources | Harold Hotelling; The Journal of Political Economy; Vol 39, No 2; April 1931; pp. 137-175 [of historical note] |
| Hotelling's "Economics of Exhaustible Resources": Fifty Years later | Shantayanan Devarajan and Anthony C. Fisher; Journal of Economic Literature; Vol XIX (March 1981), pp 65-73 |
| The Economics of Resources and the Resources of Economics | Robert M. Solow; The American Economic Review; Vol 64 No 2; May 1974; pp. 1-14 - [excellent piece, remains a topic of discussion] |
| Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Issues | Lester B. Lave, Chris T. Henderson, Noelette M. Conway-Schempf and Francis McMichael; Journal of Environmental Engineering; October 1999; pp.944-949.
ABSTRACT: Municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling targets have been set nationally and in many states. Unfortunately, the definitions of recycling, rates of recycling, and the appropriate components of MSW vary. MSW recycling has been found to be costly for most municipalities compared to landfill disposal. MSWrecycling policy should be determined by the cost to the community and to society more generally. In particular, recycling is a good policy only if environmental impacts and the resources used to collect, sort, and recycle a material are less than the environmental impacts and resources needed to provide equivalent virgin material plus the resources needed to dispose of the postconsumer material safely. From a review of the existing economic experience with recycling and an analysis of the environmental benefits (including estimation of external social costs), we find that, for most communities, curbside recycling is only justifiable for some postconsumer waste, such as aluminum and other metals. We argue that alternatives to curbside recycling collection should be ex-plored, including product takeback for products with a toxic content (such as batteries) or product redesign to permit more effective product remanufacture. |
| Packaging, Recycling, and Solid Waste | [focus on Part 1, chpaters 1-3]; Lynn Scarlett, Richard McCann, Robert Anex, and Alexander Volokh; Reason Public Policy Institute; Policy Study #223
Estimates potential costs and benefits of recycling. Examines wasteful effects of "one-size-fits-all" policies. - from Solid Waste Studies |
| Economic & Environmental Benefits of Beverage Container Recycling: The Case for Updating Massachusetts' Bottle Bill | Dr. Jeffrey Morris, Sound Resource Management
Executive Summary
Massachusetts' proposed updated Bottle Bill (UBB) will provide quantifiable economic and environmental benefits with an estimated annual monetary value of $62.3 to $98.7 million. In addition, the proposed UBB will provide substantial, as yet unquantifiable, economic and environmental benefits. These quantifiable and non-quantifiable benefits result from projected total recovery under the UBB of between 160,000 and 164,000 tons of beverage containers for recycling each year, including 86,000 to 94,000 tons collected under the current Bottle Bill, as well as an additional 70,000 to 74,000 tons projected for collection as a result of the proposed update. |
| Massachusetts State Regs | |
| Aluminum Beverage Can Continues to be Most Recycled Consumer Beverage Package | The Aluminum Association |
| Can or Bottle, Bill Wants Makers to Pay for Recycling | The Aluminum Association |
| National Bottle Bill Gets Senate Scrutiny | The Aluminum Association |
| Jeffords Introduces New Recycling Proposal | The Aluminum Association |
| US EPA's Municipal Solid Waste Reference Site | |