Linking among urban waste generation & recycling and socioeconomic patterns. Comparative analysis in two Italian regions

Background The Eurostat data from 1995 to 2003, seem to relate an increase of richness, due to industrial development and living conditions improvement, with an increase in waste production. Each year in the European Community 1.3 billion tons of wastes are produced. In Italy, recycling and waste management policy is regarded as one of the most important environmental problems to be solved because of the important social and political issues apart from the technical aspects. This article aims at analysing different waste management methods in two Italian regions. Methods Simple linear regression was used in order to evaluate the linear relationship, the correlation between regional gross domestic product (GDP) trends or other economic indicators, and total urban waste production and recycling. In this work, the correlation was made between the Piedmont and Apulia. Data, ranging from 2002 to 2006, based on APAT and ISTAT statistics. Results We present preliminary results of our analysis. First, we have correlated the regional GDP per capita with the regional urban 17th Annual EUPHA Meeting: Poster Presentations: Abstracts 213 waste production. Results show R2 = 0.9519 for Piedmont and 2 R = 0.9395 for Apulia, confirming a good correlation between the two parameters. Also correlation between Household final consumption expenditure (HFCE) and total production of waste give an R2 = 0.8747 for Piedmont and R2 = 0.9864 for Apulia, seems to confirm this meaning. On the other hand, by correlating GDP values and the rate of waste recycling we have found a lower association (R2 = 0.6946 for Piedmont and R2 = 0.0460 for Apulia, respectively). It could be pointed out that there is no correlation between the two indicators for Apulia and this result appears to be an index of waste mismanagement. Conclusions Our preliminary results literature highlighted the need to identify a framework to decouple waste generation from economic activity, so that economic growth will no longer lead to more and more rubbish.