Koppling mellan avfallsplaner och vetenskap - finns den?

Sammanfattning

In a ten-year perspective, the amounts of waste produced by households in Sweden have not changed to any great extent. This is despite the fact that the EU has decided on waste minimization targets (Naturvårdsverket, 2020). All municipalities in Sweden must draw up municipal waste plans, the purpose of which is for Sweden to meet the EU target for reducing consumer waste. The development of the waste plans is a large undertaking, with many stakeholders involved in the processes of developing the plans. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether scientific methods are used in the waste plans, and to see if some of the waste plans' goals, measures and control instruments correlate with a positive outcome with the amounts of waste. By studying waste plans and scientific articles in waste reduction, material flows and behaviours, the study has tried to identify factors that result in the amount of waste being reduced. The waste plan areas were compared with statistics on the amounts of waste to see if they are actually decreasing. The study shows that several of the science factors from scientific literature on the subject appear in most waste plans. The number of science factors per waste plan, or which science factors are in a waste plan, does not seem to have any significance for the waste quantities in the relevant waste area. It turned out that background factors, such as municipalities with a larger number of inhabitants and a higher level of education, can have a positive impact on waste minimization. More studies on the size of the waste plan areas, the education level of the population and the number of municipalities per waste plan need to be done in order to understand what affects the amounts of waste. When the result in most cases is not reduced amounts of waste, the form or existence of the waste plans can be questioned from a resource wastage perspective.