Waste dynamics, decoupling and ex post policy effectiveness: evidence from the EU15

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of municipal and packaging waste generation, based on panel data for the EU15, to assess the effects of different drivers (economic, structural, policy). The evidence provides some valuable policy implications since it analyses the extent to which delinking occurs for the two waste streams and how EU waste policy has influenced the waste generation-income relationship in the ten years 1995 to 2005. We demonstrate that there is still no absolute trend towards delinking for waste generation. Although absolute delinking is far from being generally achieved for either municipal or packaging waste generation, there are some first positive signs of increasing relative delinking for waste generation. Nevertheless, the impact of waste policies, is negligible and also endogenous in terms of income dynamics, probably due to the strong focus on waste disposal and recovery rather than waste reduction at source. Thus, waste prevention should become the core objective of future waste regulation efforts in the EU, even assigning targets in terms of waste generated per capita, towards the achievement of absolute decoupling in the long run.