Embedding landfill diversion in economic, geographical and policy settings

Abstract

We analyse the process of landfill diversion embedding the dynamics in a frame where economic, geographical and policy variables enter the arena. We aim at investigating in depth what main drivers may be responsible for such a phenomenon. We exploit a rich panel dataset covering all the 103 Italian provinces. The case study on Italy is worth being considered provided that Italy is a main country in the EU, thus offering important pieces of information on the evaluation of policies. Evidence shows that the observed decoupling between economic growth and landfilling is driven by a mix of structural factors, as population density and waste management strategies. If on the one hand, the landfill tax is not arising as a significant driver of the phenomenon, other waste management instruments are associated with high significant negative effect on landfilled waste. In association to the features of the tariff system, we also underline the key role played by the share of separated collection in driving down landfilling of waste. Both the evolution of collection and tariff system are joint factors that may drive a wedge between the comparative waste performances of northern and southern regions.

Acknowledgements

We thank some colleagues and participants at the ENVECON 2008 conference in London for useful comments. The intellectual contribution of Roberto Zoboli to the development of the article is also recognized. We note the precious work on the dataset construction and preliminary analysis by Valentina Iafolla e Cecilia Vita Finzi. We appreciate comments received by anonymous referees. We thank ISPRA (the former APAT) for data generation. Usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

¹ We quote among the others Miranda et al. (2000), Eshet et al. (2006), Dijkgraaf and Vollebergh (2004), Seok Lim and Missios (2007). Caplan et al. (2007) offer an example of how economic evaluation techniques may inform landfill siting processes.

² We refer to Cole et al. (1997), Stern (1998, 2004), Musolesi et al. (2009), for major critical surveys and a discussion on the theoretical underpinnings of delinking and EKC, which mainly analyse air and water emissions, mainly CO₂, with a limited focus on waste streams.

³ Part of the tariff covers fixed costs and part refers to the variable management costs. The former correlates to the size of household living space and, as a new element, to the number of people in the family. The variable part is associated with the (expected) amount of waste produced, which is calculated on the basis of past trends and location-related features. The variable part is abated by around 10–20% if households adopt domestic composting and/or join garden-waste door-to-door collection schemes.

⁴ Quadratic specifications are not significant when other controls such as density are included.

⁵ If we run the analysis just for 2002–2004, the period for which panel data related to the coverage of variable cost of waste management are available, the variable is still not significant even in the FEM. We note that the signs and significance of the coefficients for VA and density change, highlighting the VA of having a fairly long time series compared to the more usual short-term panel. This proves the value and robustness of our dataset, which exploits a sufficiently long time series and in-depth regional heterogeneity.

⁶In terms of model robustness, the higher R ² (within) performance is the quadratic form with density, tourist flows, population tariff coverage and incinerated waste per capita (column 11 in Table 3).

⁷ A logarithmic model that estimates the impact of population on landfill diversion also shows a negative and significant effect. Both higher density and higher population drive down landfilling.

⁸ In Table 4 are presented the regression results of only one of the first stage probit regressions. In particular, column 1 is the first stage probit of the FEM model in column 2. All the other first stage probit are omitted for brevity reasons, but they show coherent results.