<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>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.</p></abstract>

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.

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

Department of Industrial & Information Engineering & Economics

Department of Management and Business Administration

Environmental and Climate Technologies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

With growing environmental legislation and mounting popular concern for the need to pursuing a sustainable growth, there has been an increasing recognition in...

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

Published Online: Dec 14, 2020

Page range: 225 - 238

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rtuect-2020-0099

Keywords
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), ecological and economic efficiency, Solid Waste Management (SWM), undesirable output, urban waste management

© 2020 Massimo Gastaldi et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

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

Published Online: Dec 14, 2020

Page range: 225 - 238

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rtuect-2020-0099

KeywordsData Envelopment Analysis (DEA), ecological and economic efficiency, Solid Waste Management (SWM), undesirable output, urban waste management

© 2020 Massimo Gastaldi et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), ecological and economic efficiency, Solid Waste Management (SWM), undesirable output, urban waste management