The Competition Environment of Packaging Waste Management: Some Evidence from Italy

Abstract

The article aims at verifying some features of packaging waste management system, as it has been organized in Italy, with particular regards to its impact on competition and compliance with antitrust principles. According to a faculty foreseen by the Italian law, many consortia have been set up among private companies for collectively managing different types of packaging waste, as well as for fulfilling at the same time the undertaking’s environmental liabilities established by the European Union. Although these consortia obtained good results in managing the household packaging waste, they also posed serious competition concerns, as demonstrated by some proceedings carried out by the Italian competition authority. Downstream a survey of the recent Italian antitrust experience, the article finally sketches some considerations with regards to a more competitive fine tuning of the collective waste management systems to be obtained by means of auctions for assigning the waste collected by the municipalities.

Keywords: antitrust, auctions, competition, consortia, environment protection, packaging waste, Italy

JEL Classification: K21, K23, L41, Q53