The European Environment Agency‘‘s Topic Centre on Waste and Material Flows has provided a useful note on waste prevention which may interest you.

The concept of response indicators may help us deal with the challenge of developing sound, valid and generally accepted indicators for waste prevention.

Indicator has become a key word in policy debates over the last decade, not least in the field of environmental policies. Essentially, all this talk about indicators stem from our wish to know whether the things we do - and the measures we apply - have the desired effects.

The OECD has been a frontrunner in the development and use of indicators related to sustainable development, i.e. indicators aimed at measuring whether growth is achieved in a way that balances economic, environmental and social concerns without compromising the interest of future generations. In concurrence with the use of indicators becoming more widespread, the theoretical reflections on what they are and how we use them have also been refined. The Danish lead organisation of the Topic Centre has recently finalised a project aiming at developing response indicators, which present information on waste prevention.

What are response indicators?

Response indicators are - very broadly speaking - tools designed to help describing and measuring how the society responds to a certain problem.

We may apply response indicators at three levels:

1. focus on the number of policies adopted and implemented in order to directly combat the problem
2. measure the actual implementation of policies
3. measure the impact of policies in relation to the effect on the problem itself.Indicators at this level may be divided into two groups: Generic indicators that aim at measuring the overall effect of all policies on the problem concerned. Or policy specific indicators that aim at measuring the impacts of specific policy measures.

Response indicators related to waste prevention

Development of a general set of waste prevention indicators has proven to be a particular challenge, especially in the OECD countries since waste policies, by contrast to the EU, differ largely from one member country to another. It is commonly recognised that waste prevention is an important objective in relation to environmental sustainability. Therefore, a strong and legitimate demand for waste prevention indicators exists. Nevertheless, widely accepted indicators for waste prevention do not exist - yet.

Working with response indicators at the three levels described above in relation to waste prevention would imply focusing on

For level 1) providing an overview of the number of policy measures applied with the aim of reducing waste. For example, directly imposed limitations on the amounts of waste created by certain sectors, regulations promoting reuse etc.
For level 2) measuring the implementation of policy measures, for example counting the number of companies taking part in waste prevention schemes, calculating revenues from waste taxes or amounts of financial subsidies available for developing waste preventing technologies or production methods.
For level 3) measuring the de facto impact on waste generation/environmental impact. The generic approach would be to focus on the overall fluctuations in waste arisings. The policy-specific indicators would aim at uncovering the precise connection between a certain policy measure (e.g. obligatory reuse system for beverage packaging) and waste amounts.

The development of sound waste prevention indicators is undoubtedly impeded by the fact that waste amounts collected come from so many different sources, and these sources are all affected by different factors: overall economic growth, consumer habits, technology development, infrastructure etc.

A specific waste prevention initiative may prove to be successful even thou