Waste generation and the economic cycle in European countries. Has the Great Recession decoupled waste and economic development?

This paper studies the relationship between waste generation and economic development for a sample of European countries. In contrast to previous studies that have considered this relation to be stable over time, we apply methods for testing the presence of structural breaks located at unknown periods. This methodology provides robust evidence against the stability of the relationship, finding ruptures in the so-called dot.com crisis, in the early 2000s, and in episodes related to the Great Recession. Once these breaks are considered, we observe that waste generation shows considerable dependence on the evolution of the economy for those countries with the lowest per capita income levels. This suggests the existence of a trade-off between convergence policies and those aimed at avoiding environmental degradation, suggesting the need to maintain and reinforce environmental policies in the EU.

Waste generation in Spain. Do Spanish regions exhibit a similar behavior?

We analyze waste generation differences across Spanish regions by studying the evolution of two complementary indicators: municipal solid waste per unit of GDP as well as in per capita terms. To that end, we apply the recent statistic developed by Phillips and Sul (2007) which allows us to test for the null hypothesis of convergence. In the present case, this hypothesis is equivalent to admitting that the waste generation follows a similar path across the Spanish regions. Our results lead us to reject this hypothesis, which implies that Spanish regional waste generation is quite heterogenous and exhibits several patterns of behavior. We observe that the northern regions exhibit the lowest waste ratios while the insular and Mediterranean coast regions have the highest waste generation. This different behavior is also explained by some socioeconomic factors. Per capita income, environmental spending and education level are helpful in this regard. The population dispersion and the number of years that a region has been governed by a left-wing party are also associated with lower levels of waste generation. Finally, we can also observe that the regions with the highest levels of waste generation are greatly dependent on the tourism industry. Then, strategies targeting the transit towards a more sustainable economy in Spain should take into account this fact. In particular, the adoption of methods for the reduction of the waste levels generated by tourism activities in these areas can be very useful.