Decoupling Recovered and Unrecovered Waste in OECD Countries. Are We Really Transitioning Towards Circular Economies?

This paper analyzes per capita municipal solid waste data by distinguishing between recovered (recycling and composting) and unrecovered waste for a sample of 14 OECD countries. To that end, we employ a method that allows us to estimate the elasticities of these two variables with respect to per capita Gross Domestic Product under the presence of structural breaks that occur at unknown periods of time. The results show that neither relationship is stable, with the Great Recession playing a key role. We can see that unrecovered waste elasticities are mostly negative, whilst recovered waste elasticities are mostly positive, but lower than one. This suggests that waste policies have been effective in reducing waste, but more efforts are required to improve waste recovery and achieve truly circular economies. The existence of serious limitations to recovery, including technological and social, are serious barriers to this task