Do mandatory environmental policies really work? A case study of California's mandatory commercial recycling law

Abstract

Increased volumes of solid waste disposal continue to take their toll on US landfills which potentially have very dire consequences, especially regarding increased greenhouse gas emissions from methane and carbon dioxide. The objective of this research is to find out if mandatory recycling policies, such as the one implemented by California in 2012, have a significant reductive effect on landfill waste disposal.Using county-level panel data from 2001 to 2018, a two-way fixed effect difference-in-difference estimator is implemented to tease out the effect of this policy on California landfills using the state of Washington as a counterfactual. Results show that this policy led to 0.082 ton-reduction in landfill waste per capita per year which amounts to 9% reduction in the total volume of landfilled waste. Several robustness checks were carried out to ensure the reliability and stability of our findings. Thus, if cost effective, mandatory commercial recycling policies can be added to other waste reduction policies such as voluntary recycling and stimulation of the waste export market to attain maximum waste reduction benefits.