Beitrag österreichischer Haushalte zur Abfallwirtschaft : Erhebung der volkswirtschaftlichen Kosten der privaten Haushalte für Maßnahmen zur Zielerreichung des AWG

Abstract

Since the enactment of the first austrian waste management act in 1990, a modern and high-perfomance waste disposal structure has been developed. Within the scope of the interdisciplinary research work -Benchmarking österreichische Abfallwirtschaft- proposals for the principal advancement of the future waste management strategy are sought. For that purpose comprehensive analysis of the current situation are necessary. The survey should give answers for the questions how far and how cost-effective the aims of the waste management law [AWG 2002] are achieved. The object of research of this paper are private households as a part of the waste management in Austria. The intention is to analyse all activities of private households that support the achievement of the judicial aims. As well as to explore the logic of the flows and stocks of waste within the system household and to ascertain the economic costs for the activities. This systematic und scientific consideration of the private households as a part of the national waste management instead of a black box is long overdue, especially because of the small material flow within the waste management in narrow sense in comparison to the national economy. A created system of spheres of actions by reference to the waste hierarchy of the europeane union is the groundwork for a discussion which acitivities can be analysed quantitatively or qualitatively. Is it possible to calculate the economic costs for a measure of the private households, it will be implemented in a developed Material Flow Analysis (MFA) model, based on the software STAN. The detected missing figures for economic costs and the wide spatial variety have been accomodate by developing a dynamic calculation model in MS EXCEL considering three specific types of private households. The last step of merging the economic costs per waste fraction and year with the MFA model provides a meaningful illustration of the results. The result of approximatley 3,5 thousand million economic costs per year for activities carried out by private households shows their tremendous relevance within the austrian waste management. Nevertheless, the research identified relevant influencing factors such as the population density and potentials for private households, for companies and for the state to reduce or to increace the economic costs.