International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

and residual waste fee not so great as to encourage illegal disposal. The flat rate fee
element is important to help balance these objectives. It can also be used to ensure
that the costs of service provision are covered, even where waste prevention and
recycling behaviour improves significantly (in which case, in the absence of a flat fee
raises the issue of revenue instability).
The range of approaches to pay-by-use includes systems where households are
charged based on:
1) The weight of material set out;
2) The volume of material generated;
3) The frequency of collection; or
4) A combination of these factors.
The following sections describe the approach used in particular countries and, based
on a desktop evaluation of available literature, assess the success of particular
approaches and the impact on waste prevention.
8.2 Where Has the Policy Been Applied and Why?
The following sub-sections give the background to selected countries which operate
waste charging systems. Assessment of the systems, and other evidence where
available, is given under the standard headings used through this report in the
sections that follow. Section 8.5 of this report in particular attempts to assess the
impact of charging on waste prevention and recycling. This is done by drawing
evidence from individual case studies to assess particular charging mechanisms,
rather than by assessing charging on a country by country basis (which would disguise
the impacts of particular locally implemented approaches).
We have focussed our attention on a range of examples from counties where lessons
can be learnt from the charging systems employed.
In individual countries, different parts of the infrastructure may operate somewhat
differently. In particular, the scope of kerbside collections in countries such as
Denmark tends to be very narrow (sometimes, just paper and card and glass are
collected at kerbside). In the Netherlands, the scope tends to include biowaste (and
prior to the introduction of charging systems, garden waste has typically been
collected free of charge), though it does not always include all packaging fractions. In
other countries, notably Belgium, Austria and Germany, the scope of kerbside
systems is much more comprehensive. Bring sites tend to be more important in
countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Of course, there is
local variation in the scope of kerbside collection schemes in most countries, but this
is less true in countries / regions where:
119
� Ordinances are in place for the collection of biowaste (Austrian, Germany,
Catalonia (Spain), Flanders (Belgium), and ‘voluntarily’ in the Netherlands);
� Producer responsibility (see Annexes 19.0 to 26.0) measures require
commodity related organisations to fund, more or less completely, the
kerbside collection of various materials, notably packaging materials
(examples of ‘full financial responsibility’ being Germany, Austria, Belgium);
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes