درباره ارتباط بین ارائه خدمات مدیریت مواد زائد و دامپینگ غیرقانونی

The illegal dumping of waste has been a serious environmental concern of most countries in the world. This paper examines the relationship between the provision of waste treatment facilities and the frequency of illegal dumping. Our results show that a shortage of intermediate waste treatment facilities has played an important role in increasing the frequency of illegal dumping.

The illegal dumping of waste has been a serious environmental concern for most countries. According to the USEPA (1998), for example, illegal dumping is “a major problem for many communities throughout the United States”. The UK Environment Agency also reports that “[i]t is estimated to cost £100–150 million every year to investigate and clear up” illegal dumping.2 In response to these situations, several countries have begun to reexamine their regulations for illegal dumping and are introducing more stringent rules and/or penalties for waste crimes. UK's DEFRA launched tougher penalties against waste crimes like illegal dumping,3 while the Japanese government has over the last decade repeatedly strengthened the penalties laid down in the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law. Although illegal dumping occurs for various reasons, one of the main factors inducing illegal dumping is thought to be a shortage of proper waste treatment facilities. In the absence of sufficient proper waste treatment facilities, the cost of proper waste disposal will increase. As a result, people are more likely to dispose of their waste illegally to reduce the cost of such disposal. Munton (1996), for instance, noted that “[i]ncreased demand coupled with insufficient disposal capacity ‘threatens to increase illegal disposal, a result which would exact a terrible price in terms of environmental degradation and danger to human health”’.4 This logic is quite intuitive, but there is little quantitative evidence to support the argument that a shortage of waste treatment facilities increases the frequency of illegal dumping. In this paper, then, we empirically demonstrate how the shortage of waste treatment facilities influences the frequency of illegal dumping. For this purpose, we use prefecture-level panel data on illegal dumping in Japan. In order to measure the shortage of waste disposal facilities, as we do in the following section, we examine the number of landfill sites and the number of intermediate waste treatment facilities, where waste is incinerated or reduced in weight before being disposed in landfills. The present study is largely related to that of Sigman (1998), to our knowledge the only study besides that of Kim et al. (2008) that empirically examines the issue of illegal dumping.5 Sigman studied the illegal dumping of used oil in the United States and showed that the number of illegal dumping incidents was related to restrictions on the disposal of used oil. She did not, however, examine the effect of a shortage of waste treatment facilities, which is the main focus of this paper. Kim et al. (2008) also examined illegal dumping, but from a different point of view. They argued that illegal dumping was induced by the introduction of unit pricing of municipal solid waste in Korea. They urged authorities to be cautious about increasing unit prices. The main findings of our study are as follows. We statistically show that (1) increasing the number of intermediate waste treatment facilities decreases the number of illegal dumping incidents, yet (2) number of landfill sites has ambiguous effect on the number of illegal dumping incidents, and (3) there is a positive relationship between the weight of waste discharge and frequency of illegal dumping. We also find that (4) stronger penalties for illegal dumping deter illegal dumping. In the next section we describe the state of waste discharge and its illegal dumping in Japan. In Section 3 we provide economic and econometric models and the properties of the relevant data. In Section 4 we present the estimated results and their policy implications. Finally, in Section 5 we provide some concluding remarks.

Our results support the common belief that the proper provision of waste treatment facilities decreases illegal dumping. Specifically, we show that the number of illegal dumping incidents decreases as the number of intermediate waste management facilities increases. Each estimated result consistently shows that the number of intermediate waste treatment facilities has played an important role in the frequency of illegal dumping. This result suggests the likelihood that not only strict punishment, but also the provision of waste management facilities, especially intermediate waste management facilities, may deter illegal dumping. If there are sufficient numbers of legal intermediate waste management facilities, the cost of legal dumping will decrease, and the incentive to dump illegally will be dampened. The analysis also shows that the number of landfill sites has a positive effect on the number of illegal dumping incidents. This result contradicts common assumptions. This estimation result llastm is statistically insignificant, however. This means we cannot draw conclusions about how the provision of landfill sites affects the number of illegal dumping incidents. We intend to explore the relationship between landfills and illegal dumping further in future studies. Another robust conclusion is that the volume of industrial waste discharge has a positive effect on the number of illegal dumping incidents. The straightforward implication from this is that we should introduce a policy that encourages firms to reduce their industrial waste discharge. In order to promote a resource circulation society, Japan's Ministry of Environment has implemented a variety of measures, especially since the enactment of the Circulated Social System Promotion Standard Law in June 2000. One of the aims of this law is to reduce the amount of waste emitted. Nevertheless, emission has notdecreased, neither in industrial waste nor in municipal solid waste. Fig. 4 shows the changes in emission, landfill, and recycling of waste from 1996 to 2005. Each set of data is normalized by setting the 1996 level at 100. It is apparent from Fig. 4 that waste discharge has not changed, while the other two indexes are successful. Since this phenomenon is observed not only in Japan but also in many other countries,20 we are skeptical about a policy targeted at emission reduction in order to reduce illegal dumping. In such circumstances, therefore, along with a penalty for illegal dumping, the proper provision of waste management facilities can be an effective policy to deter illegal dumping.