How Do the Regions of the European Union Perform in the Sustainable Management of Municipal Waste? An Analysis of the Performance and Convergence of European Union Regions

This paper emphasizes the importance of Sustainable Waste Management for achieving a Circular Economy and the need to monitor the EU and its Member States’ transformation path. Despite positive findings in waste treatment studies, there is a lack of efficiency evaluation at the regional level. The research aims to benchmark municipal solid waste management in 167 NUTS-2 regions across 20 European member states from 2008 to 2013, assessing convergence between regions using four Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models, including the Benefit-of-Doubt (Bod) approach. The results reveal a reduction of the Coefficient of Variation equal to 3.6% per year. Although this convergence, differences in municipal solid waste management performance existed between 20 EU Members States NUTS-2 regions, even within the same country. The findings indicate a yearly reduction in the Coefficient of Variation, signalling progressive convergence in waste management efficiency. However, significant variations persist among the analysed regions, with better performance in Central and Northern regions and poorer performance in Eastern and Southern regions.