Economist Robert C. Anderson and other members of the Environmental Law Institute staff recently completed a sixteen-month long study of the impact of the federal tax code on the recycling of scrap materials.¹ The report, done under contract for the Environmental Protection Agency, measures the size of income tax subsidies enjoyed by certain virgin raw materials as compared with recycled materials, calculates the impact which these subsidies may have on the market price of virgin-based products, and estimates the impacts of these price effects on the amount of recycled resources in use. It concludes that tax subsidies alone have little impact on recycling and conservation of depletable resources.²

Many other economic factors appear to favor the use of primary or virgin raw materials over secondary or recycled materials.³ These include freight rates, souce labeling requirements, former federal procurement policies, federal mineral discovery policy, and municipal waste removal subsidies.