The naming principles introduced by Hunkeler et al. (2008) and
Swarr et al. (2011) were applied in this study. Overall, costs can be
distinguished between ‘‘internal’’ and ‘‘external,’’ whereby internal
costs are monetary costs occurring both inside and outside the
waste management system, while external costs (also termed
‘‘externality’’ costs) occur outside the economic system (also called
‘‘non-marketed goods/services’’ because they have no direct mon-
etary value in the market). Internal costs can be measured either in
market prices or in factor prices, the latter are market prices
excluding transfers (taxes, subsidies, fees and duties used to dis-
tribute income between different agents in society, but which do
not represent any resource reallocation) (Nordic Council of
Ministers, 2007). The sum of internal costs and external costs rep-
resents social costs, here defined as society’s costs for managing
waste (Porter, 2002). The cost model differentiates between three
types of costs: (1) budget costs, (2) transfers and (3) externality
costs. Budget costs and transfers are characterised as internal costs,
while externality costs, as the name suggests, are external. Budget
costs are included in all three LCC types, transfers only in Conven-
tional and Environmental LCCs and externality costs only in Socie-
tal LCCs. Table 1 provides an overview of cost types related to solid
waste management.
Budget costs are incurred by waste agents, for example house-
holds, as waste generators or technologies/facilities operating
within the waste system. Budget costs can be either ‘‘one-off’’
occurring once in the lifetime of a technology (for example capital
investment or back-end costs), or recurring (for example