Waste
The statistical authorities in the European Neighbourhood East countries have recognised the importance of maintaining a regular dialogue with Eurostat in a number of areas, in particular on waste data reporting and validation in line with the EU guidelines and practices, with a focus on improving the data quality procedures. As of January 2016, a complementary two-year project on waste statistics, led by Eurostat with the support of ADE and GOPA, was put in place to provide methodological support in improving waste statistics in the partner countries.
The overview on the project activities is provided below:
Objectives
The specific project objectives were to improve:
- capacities in the national administrations to produce, manage and report waste data and statistics;
- the quality of waste data and statistics, available to and accessible for decision-makers, civil society, and other national and international stakeholders;
- the comparability of waste statistics and indicators from the six beneficiary countries;
- the implementation of international commitments (SEIS cooperation) related to environmental reporting.
Activities
The project activities included implementation of the following tasks:
- task 1: review of the existing situation in the area of waste statistics;
- task 2: establish the Technical Assistance Desk to provide targeted support on an ongoing basis in response to country requests;
- task 3: complete the Pilot Data Sharing Exercise to collect data for the production of statistics and indicators in six beneficiary countries, to identify the key data quality issues and to support the identification of areas for improvement and potential support actions;
- task 4: organise country visits to assess current situation;
- task 5: produce the waste statistics guidance to support countries in strengthening reporting and verification process;
- task 6: organise two regional workshops to exchange information and experience.
Outputs
The following project outputs are currently available:
Annex 1: The Final Project Report (15 February 2018) provides a summary of the project activities.
Annex 2: Country Factsheet (CFS) Check-list is a template that covers key issues when describing the existing situation in a country. The CFS Check-list was used during the country visits for the collection of information and identification of the main gaps and needs. The CFC Check-list can be also used by countries as tool for self-assessment of the national waste statistical system.
Annex 3: Country Factsheets (CFS) provide an overview of the existing situation with respect to waste statistics.
Annex 4: Country Data Validation Reports present the validation results of the Pilot Data Sharing Exercise (in further text ‘the exercise’) for all countries, except Georgia. At the time of the exercise, Georgia did not yet have sufficient national data. The overall objective of the exercise was to contribute to the improvement of the quality of waste statistics. The specific objective of the exercise was to build capacity by identifying the key data quality issues on the basis of a concrete and practical reporting exercise.
The exercise used the waste part of the United Nations Statistics Division/United Nations Environment Programme (UNSD/UNEP) Questionnaire 2016 on Environment Statistics (in further text ‘the UNSD questionnaire’) as the format for data delivery. The Reports document the whole validation process and comprise the results of the validation and the subsequent communication with the countries on the observations made during the validation.
Annex 5: Regional Data Validation Report, a pilot data sharing exercise was conducted using the existing UNSD/UNEP questionnaires. The questionnaires were extended for the purpose of the project. All completed questionnaires were validated and presented in the Country Data Validation Reports. The Report includes a cross-country comparison and a tabular summary overview of the data delivered.
Annex 7: Waste Management Glossary is expected to provide a common understanding of the waste management and treatment operations terms that are essential for production of comparable waste statistics. The Glossary also includes definitions of different waste types. The Glossary is in line with the provisions of the EU Waste Statistical Regulation.
Annex 8: Guidance on the estimation of uncollected waste is a document that provide a guidance on how to produce an estimations of the amounts of municipal waste arising from the areas not covered by the municipal waste collection services. The document does not provide one standard approach but describes and discusses different options. Countries are able to select the option that suits best their country specific context.
Annex 9: Project Presentation provides a summary of the project activities and findings