Waste Generation and Landfill Diversion Dynamics: Decentralised Management and Spatial Effects

This paper provides analyses of municipal waste generation and landfill diversion dynamics based on an 8-year panel dataset for Italy covering 103 provinces. Although absolute declining for waste generation is a long way off, there are some first signals of increasing relative delinking and robust average landfill diversion. Spatial effects seem to be negligible, probably due to the strong decentralisation of waste management and policies: local, economic, policy and structural factors contribute to explaining the waste dynamics. Though North-South waste performances are showing some signals of convergence, greater efforts towards convergence of waste performances in a decentralised policy scenario are needed.