A performance evaluation of MSW management practice in Taiwan

Abstract Traditionally, the performance of MSW (municipal solid waste) management is almost assessed based on the recycling rate or the collection cost per unit of waste collected only. It neglects the impact of the different actors in the society on the performance assessment. In this paper, we evaluate the integrated efficiency of MSW management that is divided into three stages: MSW generation, sorting and collection by using the tools of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and analytical hierarchical process (AHP). The relative efficiency in proxy of performance at each stage for each decision making unit (DMU) is calculated by DEA and the weighting factor at each stage in affecting the integrated efficiency of MSW management is measured through the support of AHP. We compare MSW management performance between urban and rural regions in Taiwan and attempt to examine the factors that affect the efficiency variation, by using data of 23 cities/counties in 2008. The results show that urban regions have higher performance in sorting but lower in generation, collection and integrated efficiency than rural regions. This paper highlights the important role of MSW generation in affecting MSW management performance and provides an integrated model to assess MSW management performance by dividing MSW management into three stages including MSW generation, sorting and collection.