Decomposition analysis of the waste generation and management in 30 European countries

Abstract

An often suggested method for waste prevention is substitution of currently-used materials with materials which are less bulky, contain less hazardous components or are easier to recycle. For policy makers it is important to have tools available that provide information on the impact of this substitution on the changes in total amounts of waste generated and managed. The purpose of this paper is to see how much changes in the mix of 15 waste streams generated in eight economic sectors from 30 European countries have influenced the amounts of waste generated and managed in the period 2004-2012. In order to determine these impacts, two variations of the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) analysis model were developed and applied. The results show that the changes in the mix of waste streams in most cases did not have a considerable influence on the changes in the amounts of generated waste. In the analyses of waste sent for landfill, incineration without energy recovery, incineration with energy recovery and recovery other than energy recovery, the results also show that the changes in the mix of waste streams in most cases did not have the expected/desired influence on the changes in the amounts of managed waste. This paper provides an example on the possibilities of applying the LMDI analysis as a tool for quantifying the potential of effects which implemented or planned measures could have on the changes in waste management systems.

Comparison of end-of-life vehicles management in 31 European countries: A LMDI analysis

“…In recent years, not many papers have been published analysing waste management through LMDI analysis. The results in this article (Table 2 and Figure 3) differ from two papers published in 2016 analysing the waste management of municipal and production waste in the periods 2010-14 and 2004-12, respectively, as they found that intensity and activity effects on the changes in the amounts of managed waste are mostly not substantial (Korica et al, 2016a(Korica et al, , 2016b. The main difference is that LMDI models in those papers analyse each waste management option separately in individual models, while the model in this article analyses recycling, recovery, disposal, and reuse simultaneously as one model.…”

“…This is also very important for comparing the results of LMDI analyses from different studies. Following the idea that all effects can have the same influence (positive or negative) on the overall change at the same time, and so all can be equally relevant, we applied the method of determining the considerable influence of a given effect by dividing the absolute change by the number of effects (Korica et al, 2016a). This way we established 1/8 (12.5%) of the absolute value of the total CA as considerable impact.…”

Driving force analysis for food loss changes in Cameroon

“…FL change is implicitly linked to demand which is partly reflected by population growth (Keating et al, 2014). Between 1994and 2004, population effect contributed to a net increase to FL amounting to 29.97 % at 199429.97 % at level.…”