Performance and convergence in municipal waste treatment in the European Union

Abstract

This paper assesses performance and convergence in the treatment of municipal waste by the members of the European Union-27 (EU-27) during the period 1995-2016. First, a composite indicator of performance -including landfill, incineration, recycling, and composting and digestion as treatment operations- is computed with Data Envelopment Analysis and Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making techniques at country and year levels. Then, convergence is assessed using the techniques proposed by Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) and, more recently, by Kong et al. (2017). The best performers are Central and Northern European countries such as Denmark, Austria and Germany, whereas the worst are some Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in the 2000s. Furthermore, performance has largely converged among EU-27 countries since the enactment of the current Waste Framework Directive in 2008.

Keywords: Composite indicator; Convergence; European Union; Municipal waste; Performance.