1. The excessive cost of recycling, implying a focus on such means of reducing costs as newly designed garbage trucks that separate paper, glass, and plastic and thus reduce the number of trips required.
2. Excessive quantities of garbage, implying a focus on revised policies, such as refusal to accept lawn clippings or charging by the number of bags of refuse thrown out each week.
3. Overcapacity in the recycling industry, in which too many firms may be competing for recyclables whose prices no longer cover costs, such as newspapers. In other cases, it may now be cheaper to make single use containers than to recycle. This affects the market price for recyclables and requires higher charges to cities, which must pass these expenses along to households.
4. A problem that may be the result of law, such as the growing number of state laws that mandate minimum thresholds of recycling. Such laws ignore local costs of recycling and constrain the use of policy alternatives such as dumping and incineration (TheEconomist 1997d, 63).