Other information problems can be caused, for example, by asymmetric access to information by property owners relative to potential purchasers.
While the benefits of environmental regulation in other arenas, such as air quality, have been estimated by combining information from risk assessments with values of statistical life or injury, this is not how the benefits of land cleanup have typically been estimated. Instead, the economics literature, including contributions by NCEE , has relied on property value and stated preference survey-based approaches. Significant contributions to the land cleanup benefits valuation literature have relied on the property value approach.
This work has produced benefit estimates of the Superfund remedial program e. These changed values reflect effects as perceived by property market participants, which may include human health, ecosystem, aesthetic and other impacts.
Stated preference studies have also examined likely impacts of Superfund and underground storage tank cleanups on property values Chattopadhyay et al. Although the literature linking land contamination and cleanup to human health benefits directly is sparse, one notable study examined the effect of Superfund cleanup on infant health Currie et al.
In practice, the benefits of many EPA regulations that reduce the likelihood of contamination events are evaluated according to cost savings from avoided cleanup. The wages associated with cleaning up a site and initiating a new use for the site are part of the social costs of the cleanup project.
Wages represent the value of labor resources that were likely diverted away from other productive employment. A typical assumption behind BCA is that the labor market is in equilibrium and thus at full employment. This suggests that wages are a cost and not a benefit since the workers hired are assumed to have been already fully employed elsewhere. However, the jobs associated with cleanup and reuse may appropriately be considered an economic impact. When considering the employment impacts of land cleanup, analysts would do well to consider the length of time over which employment may change; the geographic scale of interest; and the possibility for both increases and decreases in employment.
Conclusions reached by analysts of local impacts may differ from national level analyses. For local, regional, and national analyses, the magnitude and nature of employment changes across time, industries, and space are often all of interest.
MSW is a term used to describe household and commercial typically not industrial garbage. Economists have studied local user fees charged per container of solid waste and measured the impacts of such fees on waste and recycling quantities Usui and Takeuchi Research has assessed the impacts of other policies intended to reduce waste quantities and has identified least cost choices, and has incorporated the upstream greenhouse gas costs of consumer products.
Policies examined include the presence of curbside or drop-off recycling; subsidies for recycling; bottle deposits; and advance disposal fees Acuff and Kaffine ; Jenkins et al. Incentives or compensation to communities hosting waste facilities are called host community fees and may provide measures of the extent of external costs caused by proximity to waste management facilities.
Host fees provide a rare opportunity to study the outcome of negotiations between commercial entities and local communities, an example of Coasian-style bargaining in which the polluter pays the affected population Jenkins et al. A more popular approach to gain insight about the extent of external costs are property value studies that examine transactions near solid and hazardous waste management facilities Braden et al.
With an eye toward the potential negative externalities associated with hazardous waste management, the environmental justice EJ literature has examined the correlation between race, income, and the presence of hazardous waste disposal facilities.
An update to one of the original EJ studies refined the statistics on surrounding populations to better reflect the circumference around waste management units Bullard et al. The new approach confirmed and strengthened the evidence of racial and income disparities. A growing body of research has investigated not just hazardous waste facilities but also landfills and other locally undesirable land uses, and found that poor and minority households systematically live in more polluted neighborhoods Banzhaf EPA analyses of proposed and final regulations have examined socioeconomic characteristics of communities located in close proximity to affected waste management units.
EPA analyzed the Definition of Solid Waste rule for disproportionate impacts by comparing race and income in communities near hazardous materials recycling facilities where damages had occurred, to state and national averages. The analysis found evidence of potential unequal effects.
Recycling creates strong job growth and opportunities for low-skilled and mid-level workers. Jobs in the recycling industry:. Recycling provides needed jobs in sectors with high employment rates and can replace jobs lost in manufacturing. Want more facts on how recycling can create jobs in the U.
Local Zero Waste industries support jobs in other sectors. For every job created within the waste diversion industry, one additional job is created elsewhere in the labor market. This creates a stronger local economy.
In addition to job growth, Zero Waste gives value back to the community by keeping materials — and dollars — out of the landfill. Every ton of trash that gets buried in your local landfill contains products like paper, plastic, and metal that could have been sold for recycling. The U. Collecting, processing and preparing materials. CO 2 emissions from MSW landfills are not considered to contribute to global climate change because the carbon was contained in recently living biomass.
The same CO 2 would be emitted as a result of the natural decomposition of the organic waste materials outside the landfill environment. Producing energy from LFG offsets the use of non-renewable resources, such as coal, oil or natural gas, to produce the same amount of energy. This can avoid emissions of CO 2 ; criteria pollutants such as sulfur dioxide a major contributor to acid rain , particulate matter a respiratory health concern and nitrogen oxides NO X ; and trace hazardous air pollutants from power plants and other fossil fuel users.
Like all combustion devices, LFG electricity generation devices emit some NO X , which can contribute to local ozone and smog formation. Overall, however, LFG electricity generation projects significantly improve the environment because of the significant methane emission reductions, hazardous air pollutant reductions and avoidance of the use of non-renewable resources such as coal and oil that are more polluting than LFG.
Burning LFG to produce electricity destroys most of the non-methane organic compounds including hazardous air pollutants and VOCs that are present at low concentrations in uncontrolled LFG, which reduces possible health risks from these compounds. In addition, gas collection can improve safety by reducing explosion hazards from gas accumulation in structures on or near the landfill.
Generating electricity from existing MSW landfills is also a relatively cost-effective way to provide new renewable energy generation capacity to supply community power needs.
See table below for more detail. LFG use can also create jobs associated with the design, construction and operation of energy recovery systems. LFG energy projects involve engineers, construction firms, equipment vendors and utilities or end users of the power produced. Much of the project costs are spent locally for drilling, piping, construction and operational personnel, helping communities to realize economic benefits from increased employment and local sales.
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