Waste prevention and Pay as You Throw, a collective case ... - lumes

also planning to take the path that Sweden has chosen, towards incineration, which may make this debate an
important topic in the future.
Chapter 5: Conclusions
5.1 Concluding remarks
While PAYT does show potential as a waste prevention strategy it requires a proactive municipality willing to
expand collection services, educate users, and deal with a large amount of data. The policy can represent an
important step towards waste prevention but cannot tackle waste levels on its own. Consumption continues to
grow and bring with it increasing waste quantities. Further, increased sorting does mean resource recovery,
but also the use of additional energy and the creation of pollution impacts in order to recover the materials.
The most important savings thus relate to preventing waste from ever entering the treatment system. PAYT
does help to put municipal waste policy in line with the Polluter Pays Principle, and encourage the important
environmental savings that come with prevention, such as increased composting, but it is not clear how fully
effective the instrument is as a waste prevention tool in the long‐term. The instrument does, however, adapt
well to local conditions and show a high level of acceptance for stakeholders which gives it great potential to
spread and make waste management systems more consistent with the Polluter Pays Principle and the goals of
the EU Waste Directives.
5.2 Recommendations for further research
After completing this process, the researcher sees a need for further explorations of the linkages between
consumption and waste prevention strategies, obstacles to the spread of PAYT, and implications of minimum
waste requirements for incinerators on waste prevention efforts. Further, implications of the increased cost of
recycling and the limitations of funds from EPR in Sweden warrant attention as well. Finally, as bio‐waste
represents an important topic in the EU at the moment, developing a better understanding of how best to
address this waste stream would benefit efforts toward expanding waste prevention strategies in the future.
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