Does food sorting prevents and improves sorting of household waste? A case in Sweden
Författare
Summary, in English
This paper analyses household behaviour as response to changes in waste management systems. The paper discusses the results of a case study from Vellinge municipality (Sweden), where the introduction of separate food waste collection is thought to have a role in reducing the total amount of household waste and improving the sorting of packaging waste. The study relies on data from official waste statistics and a survey of 117 municipal residents focusing on households' perceptions, attitudes and self-reflected changes in waste sorting behaviour. The respondents mentioned the increased environmental awareness and the convenience of food waste sorting among the primary reasons for the perceived changes in personal waste sorting routines. The study also tested the significance of other variables, such as income, employment, economic activity, socio-demographics, infrastructure, waste tariffs, illegal dumping, and awareness raising campaigns. Most of the variables were static and none showed sufficient correlation to the observed reduction of waste collection rates and the improvements in sorting other waste fractions. The analysed case had particularly high income levels, which were the main dynamic variable under study. The analysis suggests that we may be observing an example of a decoupling between economic growth and waste generation rates. This observation is explained by the Kuznets phenomena and it is being discussed in this paper.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2015
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
182-192
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Journal of Cleaner Production
Volym
101
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Elsevier
Ämne
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Nyckelord
- Waste prevention
- Household waste
- Food waste sorting
- Decoupling
- Circular economy
- Kuznets phenomena
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0959-6526