The price of toxicity. Methodology for the assessment of shadow prices for human toxicity, ecotoxicity and abiotic depletion

Weighting of environmental impacts is necessary to arrive at a single environmental indicator. One of the methods to weigh impacts, which has been operationalised for a number of impact categories in the Netherlands, is known as the shadow price method, using the highest acceptable costs for mitigation measures as a weighting factor. Up to now, no shadow prices were available for the more complex and less documented Environmental Impact Categories (EICs) in the field of human toxicity, ecotoxicity and depletion of abiotic materials. Therefore, a method was developed and applied to assess the shadow prices of these EICs. It consists of four steps: (1) characterising current environmental policy; (2) concentrating on the most relevant substances; (3) collecting abatement cost data and (4) calculating the shadow price.