A multi-scale analysis of urban waste metabolism: density of waste disposed in Campania Giacomo D’Alisa a, * , Maria Federica Di Nola b, c , Mario Giampietro a,1 a Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain b Institute for Public Economics, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain c DSS, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy article info Article history: Received 24 January 2012 Received in revised form 25 April 2012 Accepted 9 May 2012 Available online 24 May 2012 Keywords: Urban waste metabolism Campania Waste indicators Density of waste disposed I-PAT Multi-scale analysis abstract The waste crisis in Campania has inspired a vast amount of studies. Nevertheless, very little research has been done to explain the figures of waste generation and disposal in the region. The analyses carried out so far according to the indicators used by official statistics e i.e. Waste Generated, Waste Generated per capita and Separate Collection e fail to represent this hot spot case. This paper attempts to bridge this gap. Adopting the rationale of a new accounting system, the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), two waste indicators are proposed to complement the conventional ones: the Metabolic Rate of Waste and the Density of Waste. Then a multi-scale analysis of the Density of Waste Disposed (DWD) tests its suitability to characterise Campania’s waste patterns. The data cover the period from 1999 to 2007. The results show that the DWD complements available indi- cators and further helps to explain the biophysical pressure and ecological unsustainability of the waste management in the region. The multi-scale analysis shows that regional data hide a relevant territorial diversity, emergent in the provincial analysis and even more so in the municipal one. These results have implications for governance and for the debate about mono-scale versus multi-scale solutions to waste management problems. Finally, the analysis allows some analytical generalisations on the suitability of the DWD to detect situations of potential waste crisis in other study-contexts. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Waste management is causing growing concern due to emis- sions into soil, water and air, - such as leachate, methane, heavy metals, CO 2 , dioxins, etc - as well as social conflicts around disposal sites and loss of resources and energy. These issues are amplified by demographic changes, economic growth, the increasing complexity of technological solutions and the unequal distribution of impacts. This complex picture, whose social, economic and political aspects are necessarily interlinked, makes waste management a funda- mental system that must be analysed if a transition to a sustainable society is to be achieved (Seadon, 2010). A sound discussion about sustainability should adopt a bio-economic approach and take into account the unavoidable waste associated with all production processes of modern societies, as first pointed out by Georgescu- Roegen (1971). More than one decade ago, scholars denounced the missed achievement of waste reduction (de Jong and Wolsink, 1997); indeed, in spite of cleaner production efforts and prevention poli- cies, waste generation continues to rise (Ekvall, 2005). Sustainable household consumption patterns are still far from being reached; therefore an integrated approach could help take relevant steps in this direction (Caeiro et al., 2012). Waste is one of the key areas of environmental policy and waste hierarchy e preference for waste reduction over recycling, incin- eration and landfilling 2 - has proven a valid rule of thumb by the Life Cycle Analysis (Finnveden et al. 2005; Moberg et al. 2005). Common sense tells us that waste generation and disposal rates are related to population density, economic strength, avail- able technology, and political decisions. However, when * Corresponding author. Tel.:þ39 3467245675. E-mail addresses: Giacomo.Dalisa@uab.cat, giacomo_dalisa@yahoo.it (G. D’Alisa), mariafederica.dinola@ehu.es (M.F. Di Nola), Mario.Giampietro@ uab.cat (M. Giampietro). 1 ICREA Research Professor. 2 Even if some assumptions and valuation can make landfilling more preferable (Moberg et al., 2005). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro 0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.05.017 Journal of Cleaner Production 35 (2012) 59e70