Does anyone know the economic and environmental costs and benefits of recycling? ie does it cost more or less than dumping and have a greater or lesser impact on the environment?

How do you know where I work? Hehe.

I can’t think of anything to hand on this, but in a spare moment will check it out. Suspect that kind of analysis has not been done…

NZBCSD released a survey that said people would buy biofuels if they were 10cpl less – well of course they would, even if that meant they were paying more for the rest of their fuel to make up the lost tax revenue that would be necessary to reduce biofuel costs.

People would rather pay 80c for a 1000hr lightbulb now and $10 to run and buy replacements it even though they could get one for $4 that would only cost $3 to run and it would go for 7000 hours.

We are creatures most stimulated by direct stimulus.

I don’t know what the social costs and benefits of recycling are, Paul. If you have some numbers on it, or a link, that would be really interesting, thanks.

@ Chch people

As a Wellingtonian I only know what I read in that Press article about Chch recycling. Here we pay per bag for kerbside rubbish and the council wanted to introduce cheaper bags for recycling instead of funding bins through the rates. Eric’s proposal seems most like what our council wanted to do. I agree it would be strange to charge for recycling when rubbish pickup is costless.

@ DanT

We would definitely need to think about the relative social costs of dealing with rubbish and recycling. Perhaps your workplace has some useful info on it that you coudl share with us?

Okay – user pays. But to avoid there being distortions, let us be sure that there are user pays for kerbside rubbish collection levied at a comparable level (ie not skewing things in favour of kerbside recycling or simply throwing the recycling in with the rubbish).