Abstract
Statistics Finland has compiled waste statistics since the mid-1980s. The data material included administrative registers, surveys and research results. Waste was initially classified according to a ‘Finnish’ classification based on composition of waste until the mid-1990s, and later according to the European Waste Catalogue (EWC). A Guide to Waste Classification was drafted to facilitate classification in 1999. The Standard Industrial Classification (NACE) has been employed as a background classification for waste statistics. Waste statistics have been and are being used especially for preparing the national waste strategy and the waste management guidelines, in the planning stage of waste treatment plants, for research, and as supplementary material for compilation of material flow accounting.
Although Finnish waste statistics are fairly exhaustive, they have not been able to elucidate all the required features. The biggest problem is that the development trend of waste volumes still remains unclear. Regional and international comparability also remains weak. When waste statistics are not sufficient to describe change, they cannot be adequate indicators of sustainable development. At the heart of these problems may be that waste has been separated from its social origins – although environmental load such as emissions and waste are results of economic and social activity, their measurement is made ‘scientifically’.
This report attempts to demonstrate with a few examples how social change can influence waste and lead to interpretation errors with respect to the development of waste volumes. In general, it is not possible to correct these errors, nor are attempts made to do so.
- The first example is the volume change caused by extensions or reductions in the definition of waste, which usually result from changes in social views and attitudes. Social atmosphere and conditions are reflected in different sectors of waste management, and thus also in the volumes of waste generation and its treatment in statistics, as well as in classifications and data collection.
- The second example concerns the absence of certain instruments from consumption waste statistics that are familiar e.g. from consumption expenditure surveys, such as the size of the consumption unit. It can be easily shown that both consumption and volumes of consumption waste grow although nobody would consume more or produce any more waste.
- The third issue is the connection of waste flows to economic development. The time series of the Total Material Requirement (TMR) appears to indicate that the volume of waste generated inside a country does not follow exactly the same growth track as economic development.
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