Embedding landfill diversion in economic, geographical and policy settings

This chapter analyses the process of delinking of landfill trends, within a framework in which economic, institutional, geographic and policy variables play a role. On the basis of recent decreases in amounts of landfilled waste at EU level we investigate what are the main drivers of this phenomenon, and whether there are differences if the focus is on decentralised, provincial settings. We exploit a rich panel data set from official sources (APAT, the Italian environmental agency) which is merged with provincial and regional based information, covering the 103 Italian provinces, in the period 1999 to 2005. This extended, decentralized and recent source of data is of major interest for an investigation of waste processes and for policy evaluation, where evidence is typically scattered, of poor quality and rather scarce.