Measuring environmental performance in the treatment of municipal solid waste: the case of the European Union-28

Abstract

This paper proposes a measure of environmental performance in the treatment of municipal solid waste, which is defined as a ratio between a composite indicator of waste treated through environmentally desirable operations –recycling and recovery in our case study– and a composite indicator of waste treated through undesirable operations –landfill and incineration. Moreover, it contributes both overall and treatment-specific indicators of performance. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques are used to compute the environmental performance indicators and they are illustrated with an empirical assessment of the environmental performance of the European Union-28 (EU-28) members in their treatment of municipal waste, with data for the year 2017. Our results point to a worryingly low average level of performance, with the best performers being mainly Nordic and Central European countries such as Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Finland and Denmark; at the opposite end of the spectrum, environmental performance in the treatment of waste is particularly low in most of the Eastern European countries that joined the EU-28 from the 2000s, and some Southern member states. The determinants of performance are also investigated, the main finding being a positive and statistically significant association between environmental performance in municipal waste treatment and the level of economic development.