The Costs of Disposal and Recycling: An Application to Italian Municipal Solid Waste Services

Abrate, Graziano; Erbetta, Fabrizio; Fraquelli, Giovanni; Vannoni, Davide

doi:10.1080/00343404.2012.689425

Cited by 35 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Their results suggested that local governments should promote policies to increase recycling activities. More recently, Abrate et al (2014) used two cost function specifications (translog and composite) in conjunction with non-linear generalized least squares estimation (NLGLSE) to investigate costs of waste disposal and recycling services for more than 500 Italian municipalities. They found that the studied refuse collection technology exhibited constant returns to scale, and economies of scope in waste disposal and recycling.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cost of Urban Waste Management: An Empirical Analysis of Recycling Patterns in Italy

Cialani

Mortazavi

2020

Front. Sustain. Cities

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Italy is facing high pressure to meet objectives to recycle waste and national waste management targets set by the European Union Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC; EC European Commission, 2008). However, waste collection and recycling waste costs pose major problems (addressed here) at municipal level for the Italian waste management system. The empirical literature on waste management has paid much more attention to demand-side aspects (reduction and discouragement of land disposal and promotion of recycling and recovery) than to supply-side issues such as analysis of waste management costs. This paper addresses the gap in this research field by estimating the cost function of providing waste collection and recycling services for Italian municipalities during the years 2011-2017. Specifically, we estimate cost elasticity and marginal costs to determine if there are economies of scale for recycling urban waste. Our findings suggest that increasing recycling rates would not substantially increase total costs for most of the municipalities, so recycling should be encouraged, especially for municipalities with low recycling rates. In particular, we observe that cost elasticity is higher in northern municipalities than in central and southern Italian municipalities. Our cost function exhibits economies of scale until a certain amount of recycled waste. The results provide insights into the cost structure of recycling that may lead to more efficient waste management.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cost of Urban Waste Management: An Empirical Analysis of Recycling Patterns in Italy

Cialani

Mortazavi

2020

Front. Sustain. Cities

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“…The price of inputs, as wage costs, and a proxy of the output generated, as population, are basic determinants of a cost function and their coefficients are the highest identified among the variables considered. In this sense, Savas (1977) was the first to disclose a relationship between collection costs and population size, while Abrate et al (2014), estimated, on a unique sample of more than 500 Italian municipalities, that as far as the population size of the municipality increases, scope economies increase.…”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

Factors related to municipal costs of waste collection service in Spain

Fernández-Aracil

Ortuño-Padilla

Melgarejo

2018

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Actual cost of services of local entities (CESEL, in Spanish) is the name of a new official source of statistics in Spain, provided by Ministry of Finance and Civil Service, which intends to bring some transparency to a very obscure question: the real costs of local public services, in this case, the collection costs of municipal solid waste (MSW). The study analyzes the factors that determine solid waste collection costs in 2014, using a cross-sectional dataset of municipalities of the Spanish Mediterranean Arch and Madrid, with special reference to urban development. The results of the regression reveal a positive relation between waste collection costs and factors such as higher wages, coastal municipalities, tourist areas, population and separated collection; in contrast, the increase in urban population density contributes to lower costs of MSW collection, as well as indirect management of the service is cheaper than direct public delivery.

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“…Éste es un servicio público con una gran importancia para los gobiernos locales debido, entre otros aspectos, al peso que representa dentro de su presupuesto (Simonetto y Borenstein, 2007;Plata-Díaz et al, 2014;Zafra-Gómez et al, 2016). De esta forma, el servicio de gestión de residuos se ha visto sujeto a diversas reformas organizativas con el objetivo de minimizar su coste (Bohm et al, 2010;Abrate et al, 2012), aunque, tanto la provisión pública como privada de este servicio se ha caracterizado por una estructura monopolística (Stiglitz, 2000;Bel, 2006). Esto ha implicado que la literatura más reciente estudie la eficiencia del servicio de gestión de residuos de otras alternativas de provisión (Bel y Mur, 2009;Dijkgraaf y Gradus, 2013;Zafra-Gómez et al, 2013;Bel, Fageda y Mur, 2014;Plata-Díaz et al, 2014).…”

Section: Objetivos De La Investigaciónunclassified

Estimación de la eficiencia a largo plazo en servicios públicos locales mediante fronteras robustas con datos de panel

Garrido-Rodríguez¹,

Pérez-López²,

Zafra-Gómez³

et al. 2018

HPE-RPE

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El presente trabajo propone un nuevo método para obtener una evaluación a largo plazo de la eficiencia mediante la estimación de fronteras parciales robustas orden-m, aplicando fronteras globales y fronteras locales. La aplicación al servicio de recogida de residuos para el período (2002-2010) permite obtener indicadores de eficiencia que no varían en función del año analizado, mejorando la toma de decisiones en relación con la elección de las formas de gestión de los servicios públicos. Los resultados sugieren el uso de fórmulas privatizadas para los ayuntamientos de mayor tamaño, y de fórmulas de cooperación para los ayuntamientos de menor tamaño.

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The Costs of Disposal and Recycling: An Application to Italian Municipal Solid Waste Services

Cited by 35 publications

References 26 publications

The Cost of Urban Waste Management: An Empirical Analysis of Recycling Patterns in Italy

The Cost of Urban Waste Management: An Empirical Analysis of Recycling Patterns in Italy

Factors related to municipal costs of waste collection service in Spain

Estimación de la eficiencia a largo plazo en servicios públicos locales mediante fronteras robustas con datos de panel

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