Hilary Nixon

HOUSEHOLD WILLINGNESS TO RECYCLE ELECTRONIC WASTE - An Application to California

Electronic waste (e-waste) has become the main contributor of lead to landfills in the United States. Households also store large volumes of e-waste, yet little is known about their willingness to recycle e-waste. This article starts filling this gap based on a 2004 mail survey of California households. Using multivariate models, the authors find that gender, education, convenience, and environmental beliefs but not income or political affiliation are key factors explaining the willingness to drop off e-waste at recycling centers. A comparison of an ordered probit with a semi-nonparametric extended ordered probit model of the survey responses shows that the latter better predicts less frequent answers. The results suggest targeting public education programs about recycling at teenagers or younger adults and making recycling more convenient for older adults; moreover, e-waste drop-off centers should first be created in communities that already offer curbside collection programs for conventional recyclable products.

Information and the decision to recycle: results from a survey of US households

This paper relies on a unique dataset collected during a national survey of US households to explore how different sources of information (print, television, radio, family/friends, work/school and others) influence the decision to start recycling. Although print media are influential, it is found that face-to-face communication (through family/friends or work/school) is the most effective medium to get people to start recycling. However, it is even better to provide households with recycling information from multiple sources. The respondents in this study identify concerns about storage space, time and the safety of recycling as the main obstacles to start recycling. In addition, age and ethnicity are statistically significant but not income or education. These findings should be useful for crafting information campaigns designed to boost recycling, although to be successful these campaigns need to incorporate findings from environmental psychology and knowledge of specific communities.

How much e-waste is there in US basements and attics? Results from a national survey.

The fate of used electronic products (e-waste) is of increasing concern because of their toxicity and the growing volume of e-waste. Addressing these concerns requires developing the recycling infrastructure, but good estimates of the volume of e-waste stored by US households are still unavailable. In this context, we make two contributions based on a national random survey of 2136 US households. First, we explain how much e-waste is stored by US households using count models. Significant explanatory variables include age, marital and employment status, ethnicity, household size, previous e-waste recycling behavior, and to some extent education, home ownership, and understanding the consequences of recycling, but neither income nor knowledge of e-waste recycling laws. Second, we estimate that on average, each US household has 4.1 small (<or=10 pounds) and 2.4 large e-waste items in storage. Although these numbers are likely lower bounds, they are higher than recent US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates (based on narrower product categories). This suggests that the backlog of e-waste in the US is likely larger than generally believed; it calls for developing the recycling infrastructure but also for targeted recycling campaigns.

Understanding Preferences for Recycling Electronic Waste in California: The Influence of Environmental Attitudes and Beliefs on Willingness to Pay

Increasing stockpiles of electronic waste (e-waste) combined with low recycling rates are threatening human and environmental health because of the hazardous materials in electronic products. To date, however, little is known about household preferences for e-waste recycling alternatives. This study starts filling this gap. Our 2004 mail survey indicates that California households prefer “drop-off recycling at regional centers,” with “curbside recycling” a close second. A contingent ranking (CR) analysis shows that households are willing to pay approximately

Environmentally benign materials for electronics: a review of current developments and emerging technologies

0.13 per equivalent mile per month to increase e-waste recycling convenience. Our results show that ignoring environmental attitudes and beliefs leads to biased estimates of the trade-offs households are making between cost and recycling convenience. A good understanding of these trade-offs is necessary for a successful recycling program. Finally, this article illustrates some of the strengths and weaknesses of CR, an underused technique for analyzing preference rankings.

Network Connectivity for Low-Stress Bicycling

Materials used in handheld consumer electronic devices (CEDs), such as cell phones or personal digital assistants, create environmental risks both during procurement and disposal. The increasing global demand for CEDs and recent legislative pressure motivate our review of alternative materials that could make CEDs more environmentally friendly. Hazardous materials considered include brominated flame retardants, lead-based solders, hexavalent chromium, and copper. We survey recent research in the development of environmentally benign replacement materials, provide a brief assessment of the potential environmental, industrial, and economic consequences of their substitution, and assess progress in their industrial application. Identifying appropriate environmentally benign replacement materials provides a starting point for developing environmentally friendly CED prototypes.

Electronic Waste Recycling Preferences in California: The Role of Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors

When streets with high traffic stress—on which the mainstream population is unwilling to ride a bike—are removed, the remaining network of streets and paths can be fragmented and poorly connected. This paper describes the development of methods to visualize and to analyze the lack of connectivity in a low-stress bicycling network. A proposed measure to evaluate bicycling networks is the fraction of origin–destination pairs, which are connected without the use of high stress, without excessive detour, and with the origin–destination pairs weighted by travel demand. A new method is proposed to classify segments and crossings into four levels of traffic stress (LTS) on the basis of Roger Geller’s classification of the cyclist population and Dutch design standards, which are known to attract the mainstream population. As a case study, every street in San Jose, California, was classified by LTS value. Maps that showed only lower stress links revealed a city divided into islands within which low-stress bicycling was possible, but these islands were separated from one another by barriers that could be crossed only with the use of high-stress links. The fraction was 4.7% of home-to-work trips up to 6 mi long that were connected at a low LTS value. The figure would almost triple if a modest slate of improvements were implemented to connect low-stress streets and paths with each other.

Planning methodology for predicting spatial patterns of risk potential from industrial land uses

The growing stockpiles of electronic waste (e-waste) pose a threat to human and environmental health if improperly disposed because of the hazardous materials in e-waste. The number of recycling programs across the U.S. is increasing, yet little is known about household e-waste recycling preferences. Our survey of California households indicates that most prefer curbside recycling, but drop-off recycling at regional collection centers also has widespread support. Most importantly, we find that it is important to include information on environmental attitudes and behaviors when estimating willingness to pay (WTP) for e- waste recycling; neglecting environmental attitudes can result in a biased WTP. Other key predictors of WTP include age, gender, ethnicity, and attitudes toward the role of business in protecting the environment.

Used Oil Policies to Protect the Environment: An Overview of Canadian Experiences

Abstract The nature of environmental risk is often determined by the location patterns of industrial firms in a locale. We develop a methodology for analyzing the capacity of toxics-generating industries to leave toxic residuals on the landscape, in the context of long-term master planning. To understand an areas risk profile, we first characterize the location pattern of risk-generating firms and develop ways to represent the risk potentials of these shapes. To this end, we develop a geometric approach for characterizing the spatial patterns of these clusters of dirty industries, using new measures for analyzing spatial densities and compactness. We then introduce context (i.e. actual zoning patterns, transportation corridors) and explain how this relates to the spatial patterns found. We illustrate this analytical method with application to Orange County, California, USA and point out how it affords a deeper understanding of the connections between industry and environmental risk. We end the article with a discussion of how these analytical methods might be used for land use planning.

Streetcar Resurgence in the United States: Transit Strategy, Growth Machine Tactic, or Some of Both?

We examine some consequences of dumping used oil in the environment and review some policies to foster used oil recycling. We then contrast policies adopted in the Canadian Prairie Provinces for managing used oil, used oil filters, and containers, with those put in place in the rest of Canada. Our analysis proposes that public-private partnerships relying on economic instruments and public education can be more effective for recycling used oil than public agencies relying mostly on regulations.