title: The municipal waste management: a comparison between Germany and Italy.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In the European scenario Municipal Waste Management (MWM) is very heterogeneous, and many countries did not achieve yet the decoupling between economic growth and MW production. The objectives of the study were to evaluate temporal trends of MWM and economic indicators to evidence differences between Germany and Italy, and to assess the relationship between economic indicators and MW production, to highlight whenever decoupling was achieved.
  
  
  METHODS
  Time series analyses (1995-2010) of data related to MWM and income/consumption indicators were performed, and simple regression analyses were run to evaluate the relationship between economic drivers and MW production.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Income/consumption indicators show a constant increment in both countries, while different trends appear for MWM. German MW production was reduced, and, over the years, the main disposal method rose from landfill towards recycling. On the contrary, Italian MW production increased, and landfilling has been always the most common method for disposal waste. Besides, the percentage of MW collected separately and packaging recovered was higher in Germany than in Italy for all the investigated period. Moreover, Germany appears to have decoupled MW production from economic growth, while Italian MW production is significant positively associated to it.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Germany emerges as a virtuous country, while Italy appears as the "example not to follow". Differences could be determined by the contribution of several factors, such as educational levels, urbanization, population characteristics, employment/unemployment rates, expenditure in research and health issues, that should be studied indeed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health and Infectious Diseases, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Protano
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nanni
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Giampaoli
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Romano Spica
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vitali
mesh_terms: D005858:Germany; D007558:Italy; D018505:Waste Management / Q000592:standards*