Price signals influence decision making and behavior at each stage in the path that discarded material takes to reuse, recycling, composting, or disposal. Current signals often incentivize disposal, or fail to differentiate between disposal and diversion even when there is a significant fiscal benefit from diversion. Changing these price signals for those who do not otherwise experience them would yield significant additional diversion.
38.a Municipalities should adopt Pay-As-You-Throw pricing of residential municipal solid waste
38.b MassDEP should increase its efforts to develop models for hauler contracts that incorporate incentives for diversion rather than disposal
38.c The Legislature should expand bottle deposits to more types of beverages and direct revenue from unredeemed deposits to enhance state waste reduction programs