Replication package for "Convenience, accountability and implementation friction in European municipal waste systems"

This archive contains the data, code, source ledgers and machine-readable output files needed to reproduce the manuscript and supplementary results for the study “Convenience, accountability and implementation friction in European municipal waste systems”. The study combines EU27 country-year municipal waste indicators, policy-timing evidence for deposit-return schemes, Italian municipality-level PAYT evidence, and city service-reporting data on operational frictions such as illegal dumping, missed collection, overflow and street-cleaning reports. The package is designed to make the empirical results auditable while also documenting the transparency barriers encountered when collecting comparable waste-system implementation data across Europe. The archive supports two replication paths. First, the cleaned-data replication path starts from the packaged cleaned and canonical datasets. It reproduces the manuscript figures, manuscript-facing tables and supplementary tables without requiring web access. This is the recommended path for reviewers and readers who want to verify the reported results from stable deposited inputs. Second, the end-to-end acquisition path attempts to rebuild the analysis from public sources. It downloads or scrapes public data where technically feasible, rebuilds cleaned data products, and then runs the same output-generation workflow. This path covers public statistical APIs, country profiles, national policy sources, ISPRA municipality-year waste data, city service-reporting sources and procurement-related data where available. Because some source portals change over time, restrict automated access, require browser interaction, or expose files that should not be redistributed verbatim, the package includes source-acquisition documentation and preserves source ledgers that explain which steps are automated, which require caution, and how manually obtained files should be placed before rerunning the pipeline. The package includes a single command-line entry point, code/run_replication.py, for both supported paths; cleaned/canonical input files; selected source and analysis scripts; manuscript figure files; machine-readable supplementary tables; transparency tables; a data availability statement; a replication-status file; an output crosswalk linking exhibits to scripts and files; a package manifest; and SHA-256 checksums. The manuscript and supplement contain all substantive empirical results. This replication package is intended to reproduce those reported results and does not introduce additional findings that are absent from the article or supplement. Raw public datasets remain available from the original Eurostat, EEA, national, regional and city portals cited in the manuscript, supplement and source ledgers.