Introducing and enhancing competition to improve delivery of local services of solid waste collection

Abstract

Over the last two decades, Barcelona has implemented a far-reaching reform of the city's solid waste collection. In 2000, the city was divided in four zones, with four separate solid waste collection contracts being awarded to private firms, with none being allowed to obtain more than two zones, a rule that was revised in 2009 to just one contract per firm. This division of the market via exclusive territories sought to enhance competition in the expectation of the convergence of relative costs, efficiency and service quality throughout the city. This study analyzes and evaluates the creation of lots as a tool of competition with monthly observations of costs and outputs between 2015 and 2019. Main findings are that firms producing in larger zones report higher costs, that increased competition was not sufficient to lead to converging costs, and that none of the firms operate under increasing returns to scale. Based on our results, we recommend creating an additional zone. We further suggest that if a public firm managed one of the zones, the regulator would obtain more reliable information on the service costs and technical characteristics, thus increasing her capabilities as supervisor of the private firms delivering the service in other zones.

Multi-Sectoral Partnership for Waste Management Evaluation and Awards Recognition in Higher Education

“…Score distribution was used to indicate the variability outside the upper quartile (highest score -6) or lower quartile (lowest score -1). The box-and-whisker plot shows the minimum value, maximum value, median value, lower quartile and upper quartile [9]. Box and whisker plot methods helps to understand the variations in score data.…”

“…Since the higher education is the leading sector for education including environmental education, the mean score for this element was expected to be higher. It was found from other research that a comprehensive and integrated between basic requirements of waste management facilities, operation, education, and higher education societies participation will ensure better environmental perception, changing people behavior and attitude towards environmental and sustainability campus [9].…”

“…The selected university have implementing environmental management system with different and comprehensive approach including UI Green Metric initiative [12,13], UI Zero plastics policy [18] and Safety, Health and Environmental management system [16,17]. Indeed, result from this research suggested that to encourage the implementation of waste management needs a strategy to achieve its environmental management system objectives, including the awards recognition program [9,19]. Multisectoral partnership is clearly eminent will have a wider and deep impact, as well as maintaining sustainability of waste management implementation [20].…”

“…One of the biggest higher educations in Indonesia, has the initiatives to build an awareness of public and campus society through an awards competition for the waste management implementation. Awards competition and recognition has been known can improve the performance on waste management implementation [9]. The awards are part of the evaluation of the waste management implementation in higher education conducted by a multisectoral partnership through engaging experts from the university, local government environmental services, and Ministry of Environmental and Forestry.…”

An evolutionary game analysis on price competition in recycling industry between large and small enterprises of China

“…Any problem at any stage of the reverse supply chain could disrupt the whole process ( Cao et al, 2016 ). With economic development, the recycling environment has changed, so correspondingly, better service matching with consumers’ working and living habits is essential for better waste recovery development ( Bel and Sebő, 2020 ). In China, prevalent competition between large-scale recyclers and small-scale recyclers has become a significant challenge for the authorities.…”