Combining socio-demographic and logistic factors to explain the generation and collection of waste paper

The aim;of this paper is to develop a model predicting the collected amount of waste paper at the regional level of municipalities. Learning about the factors that influence the amount of collected paper is a prerequisite for the evaluation and reorganization of collection systems. We hypothesize that the amount of collected paper depends on both the waste potential and the factors which influence the convenience such as the density of collection sites. For this study, we used a sample of 649 municipalities. Between the municipalities, the data show a high variance in terms of the collected waste paper per person and year. We developed a multivariate regression model providing valuable insights about the relationship between demographic parameters and the amount of collected waste paper. Furthermore, we found a significant positive impact of the convenience of the collection system. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.