The Efficiency of Waste Sector in Italy: An Application by Data Envelopment Analysis

• Published in: Environmental and Climate Technologies Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 225 - 238
• Main Authors: Gastaldi, Massimo, Lombardi, Ginevra Virginia, Rapposelli, Agnese, Romano, Giulia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Riga Sciendo 01-11-2020; Riga Technical University
• Subjects: Data analysis; Data envelopment analysis; Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Developed countries; ecological and economic efficiency; Efficiency; Empirical analysis; Environmental law; Environmental legislation; Environmental performance; Legislation; Municipal waste management; Municipalities; Solid Waste Management (SWM); Towns; undesirable output; urban waste management
• ISSN: 2255-8837; 1691-5208; 2255-8837
• DOI: 10.2478/rtuect-2020-0099

With growing environmental legislation and mounting popular concern for the need to pursuing a sustainable growth, there has been an increasing recognition in developed nations of the importance of waste reduction, recycling and reuse maximization. This empirical study investigates both ecological and economic performances of urban waste systems in 78 major Italian towns for the years 2015 and 2016. To this purpose the study employs the non-parametric approach to efficiency measurement, represented by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique. More specifically, in the context of environmental performance we implement two output-oriented DEA models in order to consider both constant and variable returns to scale. In addition, we include an undesirable output – the total amount of waste collected – in the two models considered. The results show that there is variability among the municipalities analysed: Northern and Central major towns show higher efficiency scores than Southern and Islands ones.