Boosting Separate Collection of Dry Recyclables With Door-to-Door Bio-Waste Collection in EU Capitals

In this study we investigate whether door-to-door bio-waste collection contributes to boosting the collection of dry recyclables such as glass, metal, paper and plastic in 28 European Union capitals (pre-Brexit). Employing Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), we sequentially test for 13 control variables including six, related to different waste management system and seven controls related to urban, economic and political aspects. We find evidence that door-to-door bio-waste collection is associated with greater amounts of separately collected dry recyclables. Cities with door-to-door bio-waste collection, on average, sort 60 kilograms per capita per year more of dry recyclables. Although the causal mechanisms behind such a relationship need further investigation, this finding indicates that European Union waste management could benefit from a stronger promotion of door-to-door bio-waste collection.
The MLR models were built using R programming language while controlling for six waste management system related variables (PAYT system, glass bring points, metal bring points, door-to-door paper collection, door-to-door plastic collection and number of other collection systems) as well as seven additional control variables: two urban indicators (population and population density), two economic indicators (GDP per capita, material and social deprivation ratio) and three political indicators (the ratio of environmentally aware citizens, governing party’s position on the environment and level of trust in local government). The dataset is assembled of data from various sources which are referenced in the excel file with extended data. The R code and R data file are also provided.