Municipal Waste production in Portugal and the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model in defining separated collection targets

Abstract

This chapter presents the theme of the Municipal Waste (MW) production in Portugal, using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) to analyse the target set for separated collection in 2020. Generally, the higher the degree of economic development of a region, the greater the rate of urbanization and the greater also the amount of municipal waste generated per capita. Thus, taking into account the local impact that abandoned MW brings, and in order to break the link between economic growth and the environmental impacts associated with the generation of waste, countries with high levels of development implement policies based on integrated MW management models that allow the recovery, recycling and valorization of materials, restricting the disposal (landfill) to non-recoverable fractions, which creates jobs and wealth. Portugal established a national strategic plan for Municipal Waste (PERSU 2020) which defines the goals and national targets, including the separated collection target set for 2020 - a minimum to recover of 47 kg per capita per year. As DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) is used in PERSU 2020 to support the projection of the separated collection targets for the Municipal Waste Management Systems (MWMS), in this chapter we develop a model, which allowed access to more data and a more detailed analysis. Then we introduce and test a new input in the DEA model, the number of separate collection deposition equipment, which gives new results that are compared with the original ones, and finally, we analyze the evolution of values and results from 2012 to 2015 and 2017. Results show that DEA model is an extremely useful tool for national MW at national level, but also at local and within a firm level.