This chapter set out to establish a sound framework to analyse delinking for diverse waste related trends, within a WKC conceptual environment that encompasses the policy evaluation stage. This study has provided new evidence on waste generation and disposal delinking, exploiting a rich and up to date EU-based dataset that allows various analyses of the relative roles of economic drivers in the waste process, including economic drivers, structural socio-economic drivers and policy factors. The core WKC hypothesis was tested and its robustness confirmed by the inclusion of explanatory variables. First, the results show that in terms of waste generation there is no WKC trend, though elasticity to income drivers appear lower than in the past, pointing to the presence of a current relative delinking. For the EU-10, there are some stronger signs of delinking, although further investigation is needed to provide a more robust validation. There are no landfill or other policy effects that seem to be providing backward incentives for waste prevention, a result that calls for the introduction of waste policies targeted at the sources of waste generation. It confirms the current lack of policy emphasis at EU level, on landfill diversion. Second, we provide evidence confirming that landfill and incineration, as expected, are significantly decreasing and increasing respectively, along an endogenous cycle of economic development, but with policy effects driving these trends significantly: the policy dummies linked to EU Directives and the comprehensive policy index we defined, are negatively correlated to landfill waste across specifications. Some additional factors, such as urbanization and population density among others, appear to be playing a role. In the absence of policy, delinking for landfill seems to be being driven by the increasing opportunity and environmental costs associated with waste disposal. As far as incineration dynamics are concerned, they seem to be explained relatively more by R&D, an income-related country specific factor, rather than by policy levers.
Waste generation and waste disposal
MAZZANTI, Massimiliano;NICOLLI, Francesco;
2009
Abstract
This chapter set out to establish a sound framework to analyse delinking for diverse waste related trends, within a WKC conceptual environment that encompasses the policy evaluation stage. This study has provided new evidence on waste generation and disposal delinking, exploiting a rich and up to date EU-based dataset that allows various analyses of the relative roles of economic drivers in the waste process, including economic drivers, structural socio-economic drivers and policy factors. The core WKC hypothesis was tested and its robustness confirmed by the inclusion of explanatory variables. First, the results show that in terms of waste generation there is no WKC trend, though elasticity to income drivers appear lower than in the past, pointing to the presence of a current relative delinking. For the EU-10, there are some stronger signs of delinking, although further investigation is needed to provide a more robust validation. There are no landfill or other policy effects that seem to be providing backward incentives for waste prevention, a result that calls for the introduction of waste policies targeted at the sources of waste generation. It confirms the current lack of policy emphasis at EU level, on landfill diversion. Second, we provide evidence confirming that landfill and incineration, as expected, are significantly decreasing and increasing respectively, along an endogenous cycle of economic development, but with policy effects driving these trends significantly: the policy dummies linked to EU Directives and the comprehensive policy index we defined, are negatively correlated to landfill waste across specifications. Some additional factors, such as urbanization and population density among others, appear to be playing a role. In the absence of policy, delinking for landfill seems to be being driven by the increasing opportunity and environmental costs associated with waste disposal. As far as incineration dynamics are concerned, they seem to be explained relatively more by R&D, an income-related country specific factor, rather than by policy levers.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
