Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss waste reduction with unit pricing program of 3, 230 municipalities in Japan including towns and villages that have not yet been analyzed in previous studies. We sent out questionnaires for price of bags to all municipalities that have introduced unit pricing program in 1997, and analyzed the impact of increase of the price of bags on waste reduction. The result was 0.119 % reduction of waste per price rise of 1 %. We analyzed the elasticity of waste reduction to the price of bags and concluded that the elasticity is non-flexible when income is low, frequencies of collection are many, and sort of separated collection are few. We computed the elasticity for the whole 3, 230 municipalities and tried to predict the impact of introducing the unit pricing program in municipalities that have not yet adopted it. The success of the program can be improved by increasing sorts of separated collection.
