Plastics waste is a global sustainability challenge and mechanical recycling is considered one way to address it. While mechanical recycling is a well-established technology with a global market, less than 20% of the global plastic waste is recycled. As consumers of plastic waste, recyclers signal their preferences for different attributes of plastic such as amount of color, contamination through their purchase of scrap plastic (plastic waste). However, these preferences are not clearly understood by key stakeholders such as policymakers, plastic manufactures, or waste collection systems.

This analysis conducts a hedonic price analysis for bales of scrap plastics using a unique nation-wide dataset. The implicit hedonic prices for six types of plastic are analyzed. Individual hedonic analyses are conducted for eight regions in North America, which represent Pacific Northwest, Western New York, Quebec, Northeastern U.S., Midwest U.S., Southeastern U.S., Southwestern U.S., and South-Central U.S. The data spans 2005 to 2021 with nearly 60,000 observations. The analysis utilizes Bajari and Kahn’s (2002) method to estimate both marginal and non-marginal willingness to pay for different attributes of plastics. As might be expected some plastics, especially mixed plastics, require a subsidy to purchase as they have negative marginal and nonmarginal willingness to pay by recycling firms. These marginal and nonmarginal values allow the calculation of both deposits and potential subsidies to recyclers to reduce plastic waste for six types of plastics.