Developing and Evaluating Appropriate Indicators for Monitoring Waste Prevention Measures

In order to foster waste prevention, article 29 of the European Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EG requires Member States to lay down national waste prevention programmes, specifying appropriate benchmarks for waste prevention measures. It enables Member States to make use of concrete quantitative and qualitative indicators (see also § 33 III 4 KrWG). In July 2013, the federal government adopted a national waste prevention programme. The government is now tasked to monitor the programme's implementation.

This project serves to

1. develop a monitoring system by identifying appropriate indicators
2. concretise the system through suggesting procedures for data provision.

For this purpose, the project will first develop an indicator set (1) for the primary and operative objectives of the programme and (2) for the sub-objectives of the programme and the waste prevention measures. Ecologic Institut is responsible for evaluating the indicators according to the RACER methodology. This will assess whether the indicators are:

• (policy)relevant, i.e. closely linked to the primary, operative and sub-objectives and hence can serve to make statements on progress in waste prevention;
• acceptable to different stakeholders, in particular policy makers, statistical institutions, acadmia, businesses and civil society;
• credible for non-experts as well as unambiguous and easy to interpret;
• easy to monitor and control (e,g, good data availability), and to communicate;
• robust to manipulations and failures (e.g. void of inconsistencies in units for measurement) and as regards quality of the data basis.

Then, possible targets for individual indicators will be developed and a concept for data gathering substantiating the indicators will be elaborated. Eventually, it will be analysed to what extent the objectives can be achieved, serving to reflect on the need for action regards waste prevention targets and to finalise the indicator set.