Centralised target setting for regional recycling operations using DEA

This paper presents an application of data envelopment analysis for analysing the performance of a number of spanish municipalities in terms of the amount of glass recycled. The inputs considered are the number of glass containers assigned to each municipality on one hand and the population and the number of bars and restaurants in town on the other. The number of containers is the only discretionary input; the other two are considered non-controllable. In order to establish for each municipality a target to aim at, an aggregated-output orientation is used. That is, instead of projecting each municipality independently, a centralised approach is used. Thus, the model does not require that each municipality keeps at least the same number of containers but only that the total number of existing containers not be exceeded. The goal of the regional authority is to assign the available containers so as to maximise the total amount of glass recycled by all the municipalities. The fact that the number of containers is an integer variable has been taken into account. Numerical results are shown. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.