User:Elena Vindrola/sandbox

Governamental Failure
The triangle of death results partially from the Governmental failure regarding waste management. For a long time the Government has been trying to intervene to mandate recycling and waste management programs, but the results have not been efficient. The first issue coincides with decentralization of the governmental structure, which leads to implementation problems. In fact, local executive branches of the government are the ones that are supposed to supply waste management services, but since the government does not have time to exert effective local control, administration inefficiencies lead to widespread failure of the policy. As a result, black markets have arisen to get rid of the excess waste that get accumulated because of the undersupply and low quality of the public waste services. These illegal operations controlled by the Mafia do not follow the right recycling and waste disposal techniques and thus produce negative externalities on the health of the population living in the area. In particular, potentially harmful materials such as lead or acid batteries need special caution, which is not provided by black markets.

Market Failure
A second issue is Market Failure, which comes from the nature of waste management, which is a public good, and from information asymmetry between the government and the population. Waste management is non-rivalrous and non-excludable good that can get congested and thus can be identified as an Ambient Public Good with Consumption Externalities. The externalities produced by environmentally friendly waste management, such as recycling practices, are positive and thus provide marginal social benefits which are higher than the marginal private benefits. As a result, waste management tends to be naturally undersupplied. This is why excess waste tends to accumulate when policies fail to be implemented. Moreover, the population has not been well educated about the positive externalities produced by recycling and thus Italy households have shown very low overall rates of separate collection of waste materials, with the lowest percentages in the South. Since there is not cooperation by the consumer, implementation is even harder to fully achieve at an efficient level.