Waste pricing policies and cost-efficiency in municipal waste services: the case of Flanders

Major changes in municipal solid waste (MSW)-related services, such as the collection system, often require important initial investments, while the benefits on the output side typically occur over a longer time perspective. However, when analyzing the association between such policy choices and cost efficiency of MSW collection and disposal, the time horizon is often not taken into account. This article advocates the use of the Malmquist Productivity Index approach to measure and analyze cost efficiency changes over time after the introduction of the relative new weight-based waste collection and billing system in Flanders. The results and robustness checks indicate that introducing weight-based pricing does not lead to lower cost efficiency of MSW service provision.