Author(s)

A Mild, M Natter, A Weber & H Bach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a model predicting the collected amount of waste paper at the regional level of municipalities. Learning about the factors that influence the amount of collected paper is a prerequisite for the evaluation and reorganization of collection systems. We hypothesize that the amount of collected paper depends on both, the waste potential and factors which influence the convenience such as the density of collection sites. For this study, we use a sample of 649 municipalities. The data show a high variance in terms of the collected waste paper per person and year between the municipalities. We develop a multivariate regression model providing valuable insights about the relationship between demographic parameters and the amount of collected waste paper. Furthermore, in this novel approach we found a significant positive impact of the convenience of the collection system. 1 Introduction In the 70s, due to the rapid increase of solid waste from households in addition to decreasing capacity of landfills, increasing environmental consciousness and recycling opportunities, Austria, as most of the middle European Countries, established a system for collecting household waste in separate fractions. Beside the necessity of reducing the total amount of municipal solid waste brought to landfills, some of its fractions such as paper, glass or metal turned out to be profitably recyclable.

Keywords