Incentives_For_Non-pollution

Incentives For Non-pollution Economic incentives are instruments that use financial means to motivate polluters to reduce the health and environmental risks posed by their facilities, processes, or products. These incentives provide monetary and near-monetary awards for polluting less and impose costs of various types for polluting more, thus supplying motivation for polluters to change their behavior. The report distinguishes seven basic types of incentives: Pollution charges, fees, and taxes; deposit-refund systems; trading programs; subsidies for pollution control, liability approaches; information disclosure; voluntary programs. Economic incentives offer several advantages that make them attractive environmental management tools. First, economic incentives, in some circumstances, can be structured to achieve larger reductions in pollution than would result from traditional regulations. Second, economic incentives often can control pollution at lower costs than can traditional regulations. Third, the use of economic incentives, in contrast to that of traditional regulations, can more easily control pollution generated by a multitude of small and dispersed sources. Fourth, economic incentives can stimulate technological improvements and innovations in pollution control in situations where traditional regulatory mechanisms may not. Progressive companies are shifting rapidly from an approach of compliance to one of proactive environmental management. The revolution in thinking has gone through three stages: 1) the widespread environmental, regulations, management, pollution, companies, control, compliance, proactive, corporations, government, regulatory, new, incentives, firms, businesses, costs, business, quality, protection, programs, international, federal, during, competitive, waste, total, systems, strategies, processes, controls, began, voluntary, united, traditional, through, technologies