What Drives Plastic Packaging Waste Generation in Europe? An ESG Panel with Clustering and Machine Learning Validation

Résumé fourni par la source

European packaging policy is built almost entirely around treatment, while the prevention obligation that accompanies it lacks an equivalent apparatus of measurable objectives. This article addresses the upstream question directly, asking what determines the quantity of plastic packaging waste that European economies place on the market. Plastic packaging waste generated per capita, from Eurostat, is regressed on the environmental, social and governance pillars of the World Bank Sovereign ESG framework for twenty-nine countries between 2014 and 2023. Each pillar is examined through three modules: a panel comparison of pooled, between, fixed effects, random effects, weighted and dynamic estimators, with inference re-assessed by wild cluster bootstrap; an unsupervised classification comparing six algorithms across eleven validity indices, with the dependent variable withheld for external validation; and a supervised comparison of six learners under leave-country-out cross-validation, used to validate functional form rather than to forecast. Three findings emerge. Energy intensity and carbon intensity per capita are robustly associated with generation and survive correction for multiple testing, yet environmental country types carry no information about packaging burden. Social configurations do separate generation, along a binary post-transition boundary, and the sign reversal on life expectancy between the cross-sectional and time dimensions is confirmed independently by the learners. Internet penetration is the strongest association in the study, while composite institutional quality is insignificant in every linear specification and emerges under unrestricted functional form as a threshold rather than a gradient. Prevention policy must therefore engage determinants that lie outside waste management, of which online retail is currently the most important.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.