A study of Fee-Charging Techniques of General Solid Waste Disposal

This fee-charging technique cannot guarantee that the fee will over the cost, nor is it equitable since heavier users do not necessarily pay the highest fee. It also does not give people economic incentive to reduce waste. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design reasonable and feasible techniques to collect water fee.

This should ensure that the following goals can be attained: (1) to cover the cost of waste treatment, (2) to creat an equitable fee system, (3)to creat incentives to reduce the amount of water, (4) to facilitate the collecting of fees. This study includes nine chapters. The general situation of managing soild waste and the problems with the present waste-fee-charging technique in Taiwan are discussed in chapter 2; Chapter 3 discusses the economic theory for collecting waste fee from household; Chapter 4 examines the strength and weakness of the waste-fee-charging techniques practiced in other countries; Chapter 5 analyzes the degree of acceptance of various charge techniques by the Taiwan's general public; Chapter 6 estimates the household's demand for waste-cleaning services.

Chapter 7 calculates the supply cost of waste-cleaning servies; Chapter 8 suggests three different fee-charging techniques and discuesses the administrative structure and regulation needed to facilitate the techniques. At the end, chapter 9 concludes. From the empirical estimation result of the demand model for waste-cleaning services, it shows that the quantity of waste produced by household is positively related to the numbers of household members, the dwelling area, and family income.

Also, the water use (or water fee) and electricity use (or electricity fee) are positively signficant. We can thus conclude that the waste amount produced by a household are affected by multiple factors, and any waste-fee-charging technique which fails to consider all related factors will be lack of incentives for waste reductioin. Three fee-charging techniques of general solid waste disposal are suggested in this study: (1)charging waste fee accordingto the amount of water used by the household, (2)charging waste fee according to the average waste amount in the household's residential area, (3)charging waste fee according to waste bags or stickers purchased by the household.

This study also suggests that let local governments (people), which are responsible for implementing the waste-fee-charging program, decide their own techniques, and the EPA only acts as the program's supervisor, responsible for making regulation, writing program guidelines, evaluating local governments' performances, and so on.