A Paper Waste Prediction Model

The aim of this paper is to develop a model predicting the collected amount of waste paper at the regional level of municipalities. Leaming about the factors that influence the amount of collected paper is a prerequisite for the evaluation and reorganization of collection systems. We hypothesize that the amount of collected paper depends on both, the waste potential and factors which influence the convenience such as the density of collection sites. For this study, we use a sample of 649 municipalities. The data show a high variance in terms of the collected waste paper per person and year between the municipalities. We develop a multivariate regression model providing valuable insights about the relationship between demographic parameters and the amount of collected waste paper. Furthermore, in this novel approach we found a significant positive impact of the convenience of the collection system.