Download a free copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Landfills in the United States are estimated to produce as much as 45 billion gallons of leachate each year. In some areas, landfills are becoming more difficult to site. These factors may make disposal of house-hold wastes more expensive, and alternative methods of waste disposal, such as recycling, more desirable. State governments in the Midwest have implemented a variety of strategies to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills.
Regulations make some waste disposal practices illegal, inconvenient or expensive for consumers.
Some states have implemented programs that make it easy, convenient or profitable to practice acceptable disposal practices. States in the Midwest vary in their population densities and dispersion, climatic conditions, soil type, industrial bases and water resources. The differences affect the types of regulations and programs implemented. This is a report of research results on how regulations and programs influence the decisions of households in each state. To answer these questions, information was collected from nearly 1,000 households in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota about their waste disposal practices.