Award Date

12-2008

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Environmental Science

Department

Environmental Science

Advisor 1

Dr. Krystyna Stave, Advisory Committee Chair

Number of Pages

142

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify and evaluate policies that could increase the amount of municipal solid waste recycled in Clark County, Nevada. Clark County has not met the Nevada State goal of a 25% recycling rate since it was established by the Nevada Legislature in 1991. Using the system dynamics problem solving approach, a model for Clark County was adapted from a model developed by Stave (2008) to test policy options. There was no feedback in the model due to the long lifespan of the landfill servicing Clark County and the relatively shorter time horizon of the model. Since there is limited manufacturing of products in Clark County, there is a low demand for recyclable material, which is a driving factor behind the low recycling rate. The scenarios that increased the recycling rate beyond 25% were: (1) increasing residential and multi-family recycling to 34%, which represents the recyclable portion of material in those waste streams and (2) increasing residential and multi-family recycling to 25% and increasing commercial diversion to 30% from small businesses and material collected by roll-off services.

Keywords

Availability; Clark County; Motivation; Nevada; Recycling programs; Recycling rates

Disciplines

Environmental Sciences | Natural Resources and Conservation

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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