Untapped Aspects of Waste Management versus Green Deal Objectives

Abstract

Smart waste management is an important tool for energy and resource conservation, and the related recycling and reuse policies are conducive to a positive impact on the ecological footprint. Since waste treatment is a very expensive process, the principle of prevention should be implemented increasingly at the European level to meet the Green Deal’s objectives and related eco-friendly approaches more easily and cost-effectively. Therefore, the rationale of the present work was to statistically study, for the first time, from a waste management viewpoint, the waste categories and quantities produced in the past decade, and mainly eight waste categories were compared at the Romanian versus the European level, including on the level of European regulation implementation. For that, assumptions were made and ANOVA and path analysis were performed. The results of ANOVA emphasize the differences between the eight types of waste collected, to understand the challenges and the weak points of the member states in their approach to meeting the Green Deal’s objectives and gaining sustainable development. Furthermore, the causes of differences in the European Union’s member states were analyzed in clusters, based on three criteria: total waste, waste management, and waste treatment, and the results are discussed here. The study revealed that Romania proved an increased efficiency in waste treatment and the path analysis proves that waste management is better implemented than treatment management. The study concludes that, regardless of the results obtained so far, further endeavors are necessary at the Romanian governmental level to meet the waste-related European goal.