Working Program on Solid Waste Policy

This paper examines the technical, economic and environmental justification for the solid waste management hierarchy. The hierarchy ranks waste management methods, prescribing that it is best to reduce the generation of waste at the source, then to recycle and compost what cannot be reduced, and finally to incinerate or landfill the remainder. While the hierarchy has received widespread support from environmentalists, industry groups and elected officials, over the past two years critics have attacked its extensive reliance on source reduction and recycling as misguided and expensive. This paper provides conceptual grounding and systematic empirical support for the priority of reduction and recycling and argues against several claims by the hierarchy’s critics. __