Resource recovery facilities: Production and cost functions, and debt financing issues.

摘要

Extreme increases in local expenditures for solid waste disposal have resulted from a dwindling supply of local disposal capability coupled with increasing amounts of trash produced. The increasingly high cost of landfill disposal makes public policy options that reduce the amount of waste to be landfilled attractive. The intent of this dissertation is to move knowledge forward on a limited number of important aspects of the policy process as it relates to trash incineration.; Specifically, the dissertation addresses some of the fiscal questions relating to resource recovery, or trash burning, facilities. Production and cost functions for resource recovery facilities are estimated using regression analysis. Whether or not there are returns to scale are addressed using the production and cost function framework. Production functions are also estimated using data envelopment analysis (DEA), and the results are compared to the regression results. DEA is a linear program based technique that can provide information about the production process. The data used to estimate the production and cost functions were collected from the Resource Recovery Yearbook.; Once the decision is made to construct a resource recovery facility, it needs to be financed. The high cost of these facilities usually prohibits financing construction out of regular operating revenues. Therefore, the dissertation provides an analysis of the issues a government faces when debt is used to finance a resource recovery facility.; The most important public policy finding of this dissertation is that increasing economies of scale do not seem to be present for resource recovery facilities. The absence of increasing returns to scale means that other cost factors relating to the overall solid waste management process may take on more importance. The most appropriate facility size is the one that minimizes overall solid waste costs, which may include recycling, landfill, transportation costs, etc. Since the size of the incinerator does not appear to affect its cost or output, it may be less costing overall to have a number of smaller strategically located facilities rather than one big facility in order to save on transportation costs.