Development of Municipal Solid Waste Generation and Expenditures: Case of Czech Municipalities

Abstract

Municipal solid waste generation represents an important current environmental issue of modern societies. This paper presents trend in municipal solid waste generation, corresponding expenditures, and compares differences between various sizes of municipalities. Analyzed data covers almost 200 main municipalities from the Czech Republic during 2008-2012. Second part of the paper explores relationship between municipal waste volume, expenditures and selected social demographic parameters of municipalities using linear regression techniques and presents several models and discussion of the effects of considered variables. Results show that there is, without surprise, very strong relationship between the amount of municipal solid waste and related expenditures. Both these values are also strongly affected by the population level or alternatively amount of flats within the municipality. Either of them can thus serve as a proxy for municipal solid waste generation prediction. Additional estimated models explore effects of considered social demographic data on per capita development of expenditures and waste generation in order to estimate their marginal effects. Results presented in the models can have policy utilization regarding municipal solid waste collection fee differentiation, or serve as a supporting tool for municipal authorities when predicting development of waste volume and expenditures.