engleski

Selection of variables for Croatian municipal solid waste generation model

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is generated in households and enterprises because of everyday human consumption. The quantity (volume) of municipal solid waste depends on the number of consumers, i.e. population. Everyday consumption depends on consumers’ available money for consumption – more money available to spend, more waste is generated from consumption. Consumers’ ability to produce their own food, to feed the domestic animals with food residue, and to destroy waste or compost it with no especial efforts or costs (in rural and suburban households), contributes to weaker correlation of the rural population with waste generated. Urban population, characterized with higher income and employment rate is correlated strongly with waste generated. To generation of waste are contributing non-residents and visitors such as tourists. All these elements of waste generation can be shown with corresponding parameters. In testing of the waste generation hypothesis, the parameters are tested for correlations with generated quantity of waste, promoting the parameters into potential variables for waste model. Second step in waste modelling is to inspect how the proposed model variables correlate among them and to select the most appropriate candidates for the model. That step is performed in research described in this article. Total of 16 variables were grouped in five groups: county descriptive variables, total population variables, rural/urban population related, additional population and economy related variables. These groups are found to be correlated among each other. From each group, appropriate representatives are proposed: length of roads, population or households, households with and without land, tourist stays at tourist accommodation, and annual income of the county. It was concluded that the later should be modelled to represent real income structure of the population. Sampling unit of the data for this research was administrative unit county. It was concluded that special administrative unit County of City of Zagreb should be for the modelling purposes considered as part of County of Zagreb.

waste generation model, independent variable selection, correlation analysis

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