López-Portillo María Pilar, Martínez-Jiménez Guillermo, Ropero-Moriones Eva, Saavedra-Serrano María Concepción
Ayuntamiento de Getafe, Plaza de la Constitución, 1. 28901, Getafe, Madrid, Spain.
Universidad Europea de Madrid, School of Social Sciences and Communication, Calle Tajo, s/n, 28670 Villaviciosa de Odón, Madrid, Spain.
Heliyon. 2021 Dec 21;7(12):e08645. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08645. eCollection 2021 Dec.
Waste treatments, which add value to the production system, may contribute to achieving a more circular economy. These recovery treatments are material recycling, composting and digestion, and energy recovery. This paper analyses recycling activity and other waste treatments in the European Union (EU), using a comparative approach among its Member States. In order to do this, some factors that may influence these treatments are studied, such as economic development, R&D expenditure, resource productivity and the period of each country's permanence in the EU. Although waste treatment rates have converged between countries from 2010 to 2018, there are still differences. In order to explain these differences, the countries have been grouped into three clusters through a K-means non-hierarchical cluster statistical analysis. Subsequently, a non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test has been applied to examine whether these observed differences are significant in the last year of the period analysed. The results corroborate the main hypothesis of this research: there are various behaviour patterns in waste treatments according to the country clusters and based on their real GDP per capita, R&D expenditure, resource productivity and number of years as an EU member.
能为生产系统增加价值的废物处理，可能有助于实现更循环的经济。这些回收处理方式包括材料回收、堆肥和厌氧消化以及能源回收。本文采用欧盟成员国之间的比较方法，分析了欧盟（EU）的回收活动及其他废物处理情况。为此，研究了一些可能影响这些处理方式的因素，如经济发展、研发支出、资源生产率以及每个国家在欧盟的存续时间。尽管2010年至2018年间各国的废物处理率趋于一致，但仍存在差异。为了解释这些差异，通过K均值非层次聚类统计分析将各国分为三类。随后，应用非参数克鲁斯卡尔-沃利斯检验来检验在所分析时期的最后一年中观察到的这些差异是否显著。结果证实了本研究的主要假设：根据国家类别以及基于其人均实际国内生产总值、研发支出、资源生产率和作为欧盟成员国的年限，废物处理存在多种行为模式。
