Abstract

This paper is aimed at demonstrating that the measures currently implemented in Italy concerning the management of packaging and packaging waste, one of the main issues which the European environmental policy focuses on, are not sufficient to achieve the environmental sustainability in the long term. Both a drastic reduction of the volume of packaging obtained from raw materials and an increase in recycling and recovery of packaging waste are indeed necessary for environmental sustainability to be ensured. The current Italian packaging waste regulation exclusively deals with the latter target, by setting an incentives scheme which fosters recycling, while it has no or even counter-productive effects on the former one. In particular, the problem lies in the nature of the regulatory setting chosen by the Italian policy maker: Italian packaging waste regulation relies on quasi-market criteria, although market forces and price signals might not work properly, because of some circumstances highlighted in this work.