Evaluating waste collection management: the case of macro-areas and municipalities in Italy

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the gap among Italian macro-areas performances in terms of separate waste collection rate and density of separate waste collection. The aim is twofold: (1) to investigate if clear and effective infrastructure policies, in Southern Italy, have been realized that are able to reduce the gap in the separate waste collection process with the rest of Italy and (2) to evaluate if Southern Italian municipalities have improved their operational capacity in the separate waste collection process. In particular, we exploit data collected in 2012 by several Italian sources (ISPRA and ISTAT). We implement a recentered influence function regression technique that allows us to put two macro-areas in comparison (North vs. South and Centre vs. South). This technique, once measured the territorial gaps, allows to disentangle the gap in the two spatial units of analysis (at municipalities level and at macro-areas level). The estimates suggest that while in the North the issue of waste is managed effectively and responsibly with respect to the Southern area, the latter has exhibited an advantage with respect to the Central Italy; furthermore, Southern municipalities appear to be unable to pursue a virtuous waste management system generating the persistence of a marked territorial gap in terms of both SCR and DSC. The main policy implications are discussed.