Content
About the statistics
Definitions
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Name and topic
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Name: Waste - StatRes (discontinued)
Topic: Nature and the environment
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Responsible division
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Division for Natural Resources and Environmental Statistics
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Definitions of the main concepts and variables
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Employees are the total amount of staff and owners.
Establishment is according to the Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises of Norway a local kind of activity unit, which mainly is conducting activities within a special industry group.
Mixed waste is waste that is not possible to classify as pure waste fractions.
Hazardous waste requires special treatment according to the Waste regulation, and is defined in the EU List of Waste (LoW) and Norwegian legislation defining limits for hazardous properties. Hazardous waste contains a large number of different materials and products, but constitutes one material category in the statistics.
Material denotes substances that largely share the same chemical and physical characteristics. The material classification is based upon Classification of waste (NS 9431).
Ordinary waste is waste not defined as hazardous waste.
Pure waste fraction is waste that can be classified to certain materials.
Central government is one of the two subsectors of public administration; the other is local government administration. Central government comprises all administrative bodies limited according to the National accounts regulations for central government. The sector includes ministries, directorates, defence, police and law courts, and non-marked institutions such as universities and hospitals.
Stratification is the process of grouping members of the population into subgroups (strata), for example by industry and size.
Waste is defined by the Pollution Control Act §27 as: "Discarded objects or substances. Waste also includes superfluous objects from service activities, production and treatment plants etc. Waste water and exhaust gases are not regarded as waste".
Waste collector is an enterprise that collects waste. In this statistics these enterprises constitutes the respondent sample.
Wrecked vehicles are discarded vehicles.
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Standard classifications
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The statistics are compiled according to the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC2002), except nace 75 Public administration and defence, compulsory social security . Defence (nace 75.22) is published seperately.
The material classification is based upon Classification of waste (NS 9431) .
Administrative information
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Regional level
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National
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Frequency and timeliness
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Annual
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International reporting
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The statistics are not subject to any obligated international reporting. However, the source statistics, "Waste from service industries", constitute a part of the Waste Account for Norway, which is the data source for reporting waste statistics to EU/OECD (Joint Questionnaire) and to Eurostat pursuant to Regulation on waste statistics (EC 2150/2002).
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Microdata
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Raw data from waste collectors and data to be inflated will be stored as files in the operating system UNIX. Most of the calculations are stored as SAS-language files. A few are stored as excel-files.
Background
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Background and purpose
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The purpose of the statistics is production of annual, national figures for waste from the Central government by materials and activities.
Former project in 2007 failed to produce the figures for 2006. The basis for the project was voluntary delivered customer registers from waste collectors, which was gathered in connection with the pilot project "Waste from service industries 2006". As a consequence of volentary data acquisition the data amount concerning the Central government was unsufficient, resulting in no published results for the year 2006.
Customer registers was collected again in 2009 for the year 2008 in connection with "Waste from service industries". This time the data acquisition was done with filing requirement. The waste collector sample was expanded to increase the possibility of complete waste material data for the establishments, and also to increase the sample coverage. The possibilities for a sufficient sample concerning the Central government was considered to be better than in the project in 2007. Founded on this assumtions it was decided to make governmental waste figures for 2008.
Initially a more detailed classification was desired, even as detailed as waste figures for each governmental enterprise. The data acquisition method creates a basis for a sample survey, and is not a census survey, thus the statistics was compiled aggregated by activities.
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Users and applications
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The figures are of interest to the Central government, the media and the public.
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Coherence with other statistics
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Waste from Central government is comprised in the figures for the service industry . The figures are comparable.
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Legal authority
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The Statistics Act of 16 June 1989 No. 54
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EEA reference
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Regulation on waste statistics (EC 2150/2002).
Production
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Population
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The statistics comprise waste as defined in the Pollution Control Act §27. The statistics cover establishments in the Central government within the activities:
- 75 Public administration and defence, compulsory social security
- 80 Education
- 85 Health and social work
Central government is identified by the sector code "110" from The Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises of Norway. Central government comprises all administrative bodies limited according to the National accounts regulations for central government. The sector includes ministries, directorates, defence, police and law courts, and non-marked institutions such as universities and hospitals.
The statistics cover about 96 per cent of all the governmental employees.
The following activities are not included in the statistics:
- 63 Supporting and auxiliary transport activities, activities of travel agencies
- 73 Research and development
- 74 Other business activities
- 91 Activities of membership organizations n.e.c.
- 92 Recreational, cultural and sporting activities
The figures concerning defence include the defence, defence ministry, and the Norwegian Defence Research establishment. Discarded vehicles and waste from the defence disposal projects are not included in the figures.
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Data sources and sampling
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The statistics are compiled on data from customer registers gathered from waste collectors. The Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises of Norway have also been applied. Figures on wrecked vehicles are compiled from The Register of Vehicles at the Directorate of Public Roads and vehicle refund data from the Directorate of Customs and Excise. Hazardous waste is compiled from SSBs "Foundation database", including ideally all hazardous waste handled in for approved treatment in Norway.
The sample consists of Central government establishments with a customer relationship to waste collectors, which can be identified using the Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises of Statistics Norway. Only establishments with employee figures are used in the inflation of the sample.
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Collection of data, editing and estimations
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The customer registers was collected with filing requirement.
The identity of the establishments is controlled using the business register in such a way that the customers are connected to the correct establishment. The data basis is checked considering the completeness of the waste data of each establishment.
Outliers are handled by regression diagnostics, identifying establishments that both strongly differ from the strata and which will have great impact on the final result.
Inflation of the sample is done according to standard statistical methods. A rate model is used. In this model, we assume that variable x (employees) explains variable y (amount of waste), and that there is an approximately linear coherence between variable x and variable y. The ratio between variable x summed over respectively the population and sample are used to inflate the waste to cover the whole population. The population is stratified by industry.
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Confidentiality
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Data are summed and processed, thus sensitive data will not be visible in the final result.
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Comparability over time and space
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This is the first time waste statistics concerning only Central government has been made. Annual comparability will be relevant in future publications. Regional comparison is not relevant.
Accuracy and reliability
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Sources of error and uncertainty
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Errors in the data may occur as a consequence of poor quality of reported files. This may result in: 1) erroneous amounts of waste, 2) complication of the establishment identification process. Misunderstandings and errors regarding units will be revealed. In case of missing variables on reported data, a new file will be requested. Insufficient identification of establishments is solved by excluding unidentified establishments. Waste amounts for these establishments will be estimated in the inflation process.
Waste given in units other than tonnes and kilos will be converted to tonnes based on the waste collectors own conversion coefficients. Inaccurate or incorrect coefficients may result in erroneous amounts of waste. These coefficients can, to some extent, be controlled by comparing the coefficients for the different materials.
The sample is based on customer registers, which leads to some peculiar sources of error:
1- The sample include only establishments registered in waste collectors registers, thus the sample are not random.
2- The calculations are based on register from a selection of waste collectors. Some of the customers probably delivered a few pure waste fractions to waste collectors outside the selection, or to receivers outside the waste collection business. The total waste amounts and the amount of pure fractions may be underestimated, while the share of mixed waste could be overestimated.
3- In some cases the canteen services is contracted work performed by external establishments. This may have caused an underestimation of mainly wet organic waste considering that the external canteen establishment may arrange its own waste collecting agreement, separate from the governmental establishment, thus the waste amount for the governmental establishment appears to low.