Local officials’ policy instrument choices can be described as a set of management technologies from which they choose the appropriate mix. The choice depends upon the relative costs of each of the alternatives and addresses some of the factors that may affect these costs such as costs of disposal, economies of scale, levels of participation in recycling initiatives, and state level grants to local governments. In order to measure economic trade-offs between solid waste policy instruments, we
employ three variables measuring landfill, incineration, and recycling costs. Landfill and incineration costs are measured as the average tipping fee per ton of waste landfilled and the average tipping fee per ton of waste incinerated24 in each county. Recycling costs aremeasured as the average cost per capita of the county’s recycling programs25. Unit pricing programs were excluded from the empirical analysis because their impact in Florida is negligible26