Measuring avoided material – a proposal for a multilevel indicator system

Abstract

The European Union’s (EU) waste policy relies on the waste hierarchy which sets waste prevention as the top priority for causing the least environmental burden in waste management. Practice shows that waste prevention has not got priority in the implementation of waste policies, nor has its monitoring. Because of its completely distinctive characteristics from other forms of waste management – in motivation, key players, due authorities, the legal environment, and in supporting activities – it is difficult to set up defined policy goals and the conceptual framework for monitoring. The systematic review of the waste prevention monitoring literature is presented. The paper attempts to give a panorama of the EU legislation and the waste prevention programmes of EU member states as a top–down approach, including the settlement level aspects and interests in the context to approximate local and EU-level measurement needs. It presents regression analysis of the available official statistics of Eurostat and municipal waste generation. The outcome of the research is a comprehensive proposal for EU-level waste prevention indicators which could also track progress at the local level.