Ranking European countries on the basis of their environmental and circular economy performance: A DEA application in MSW

•Belgium is the best environmental and circular economy performing country in Europe.•Borders between Western and Eastern Europe in environmental performance have fallen.•Borders between north and south Europe haven’t fallen in environmental performance.•The same countries perform well in environmental and circular economy performance. The scope of this research is to present a more holistic approach on measuring countries’ performance in managing and exploiting their Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Specifically, we argue that relying solely on criteria like the recycling and/or the cyclical material use rate, can lead to an overestimation or underestimation of countries’ true performance. That is because the level of waste generation is left unaccounted, despite the fact that low waste generation is an important environmental target, and so is the countries’ true potential, as it is reflected by their economic and social progress. Instead, we measure the environmental and circular economy performance of 26 European Union countries by implementing Data Envelopment Analysis and tackle the aforementioned problem by using the generated quantity of MSW per capita and the three dimensions of the Social Progress Index as inputs and the recycling and/or the cyclical material use rate as outputs. We do so, using a basic framework and a framework that imposes common weights to enforce a full ranking of the countries. Our study shows large disparities among European countries, with respect to their performance. Interestingly though, the borders between Western and Eastern Europe have fallen, but not those between the north and the south: old EU members, such as Spain or France, perform significantly worst, both from an environmental and a circular economy perspective, than newer members, such as Slovenia or Poland. Finally, Belgium has been revealed as the best performer, both from an environmental and a cyclical economy perspective.