A survey of recycling behaviour in households in Kiruna, Sweden

• Published in: Waste Management & Research: The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy
• Main Authors: Vencatasawmy, Coomaren P., Öhman, Marianne, Brännström, Thomas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2000
• Subjects: Kiruna
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734242x0001800605; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0734242X0001800605

The disposal of solid waste is quickly becoming a severely logistic and costly problem in many countries. While Sweden is usually considered to have a fairly successful recycling programme, this varies from region to region. This paper is an initial attempt at characterizing this regional variation. In this study, the recycling behaviour of a representative sample of 1193 individuals from Kiruna, the northern most municipality of Sweden, is investigated. It is observed that the propensity to recycle differs from the results obtained by other studies in different municipalities. Some potential reasons for this are mentioned. The data in this study are analysed using simple descriptive analysis and recycling behavioural models are estimated using logistic regressions. It was found that many socio-economic factors, such as sex, marital status, number of children, type of house one lives in, house ownership, location of where one lives (within town or outside town), size of house, employment status and salary, were not significant in explaining recycling behaviours of most components of wastes.