Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Resources, Conservation & Recycling journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec Full length article Decoupling municipal solid waste generation and economic growth in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland Rémi Jaligot ⁎ , Jérôme Chenal Urban and Regional Planning Community, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Solid waste management Socio-economic drivers Decoupling policies Switzerland ABSTRACT Switzerland is one of the largest producers of municipal solid waste (MSW) per capita. The principle of de- coupling attempts to evaluate the relationship between consumption and production, and to measure the re- lationship between an activity and its impact on the environment. This paper uses the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis to understand the impact of three socio-economic drivers on MSW generation in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. Vaud is a French-speaking canton that recently implemented several measures to limit MSW generation. We used time series of indicators for income, urbanisation and policy implementation in ten of the canton’s districts, which were set as independent variables, between 1996 and 2015. A panel data analysis was performed using a generalized least squares procedure to test for an EKC. Evidence shows that urbanization was slightly negatively associated with MSW generation, but without statistical significance. However, a direct policy mechanism such as the waste bag tax was significantly correlated with a decrease in waste generation. Overall, the presence of an EKC cannot be confirmed in the canton of Vaud, as waste gen- eration tends to stabilize as income increases. It would be useful to perform a similar assessment in other cantons to fully inform decision-makers. 1. Introduction In recent decades, cities have been affected by a growing amount of municipal solid waste (MSW), which puts a strain on waste disposal capacities and on the environment (Cointreau, 2006). The total muni- cipal solid waste (MSW) generated worldwide in 2012 was approxi- mately 1.3 billion tonnes (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata, 2012). Were all countries to continue to generate waste at the current rate of high in- come countries, total waste generation could reach 5.9 billion tonnes by 2025 (Scheinberg et al., 2010). The positive correlation between waste generation and income level is often demonstrated in the literature; as disposable income and living standards increase, consumption of goods tends to follow, and waste generation increases accordingly (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata, 2012; Irwan et al., 2013; Keser et al., 2012; Wilson et al., 2012). Therefore, it is urgent to take appropriate measures to decouple economic growth from waste generation (Sjöström and Östblom, 2010; Unnisa and Rav, 2013). 1.1. The concept of decoupling The concept of decoupling, or delinking, has become a focus in economic studies, in order to understand the relationship between consumption and production, and to measure the relationship between an activity and its impact on the environment. Is the elasticity of an environmental indicator relative to certain socio-economic drivers. This occurs when the value of the environmental indicator increases, but relatively less than the indicator of the driver (Mazzanti et al., 2008). Economist Simon Kuznets originally identified an inverted U-shaped relationship between income levels and inequality (Kuznets, 1955). He posited that income inequality would increase and then decrease as income grew within a country. Kuznets (1955) used time-series data from the United States, the UK and Germany for his analysis. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis attempts to represent the decoupling of behaviours and to model a potential, in- verted U-shaped relationship between an environmental indicator and indicators of socio-economic development. Household income’s impact on environmental degradation often has an inverted-U shape when plotted (Grossman and Krueger, 1995). A large body of literature fo- cuses on the relationship between income and air pollution (Galeotti et al., 2006; Jalil and Mahmud, 2009; Selden and Song, 1994), whereas the impacts of municipal solid waste are less investigated (Arbulú et al., 2015). Some studies do not support the inverted U-shaped relationship (Chen, 2010; Johnstone and Labonne, 2004; Karousakis, 2006), while others find some evidence of a turning point for MSW generation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.12.014 Received 19 August 2017; Received in revised form 7 December 2017; Accepted 11 December 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: remi.jaligot@epfl.ch, rjaligot@gmail.com (R. Jaligot). Resources, Conservation & Recycling 130 (2018) 260–266 Available online 15 December 2017 0921-3449/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T