The generation of recyclables in the Czech Republic has long been under the European average, but the proportion from municipal waste as a whole has been growing over the past few years. Previous research in the Czech Republic mainly focused on organizational or situational factors explaining recycling performance in municipalities. This study focuses on individual characteristics that are connected, among other things, to ongoing demographic changes. Currently ongoing sociodemographic development in the Czech Republic, as well as other developed countries, influence a broad range of aspects of social life, including waste generation and its structure. This paper aims at quantifying the relation between the sociodemographic characteristics of municipality inhabitants and recyclable generation. For this purpose, 13 variables describing inhabitants, households, and housing in 4897 Czech municipalities were selected that could influence the generation of recyclables according to foreign studies. Data were analyzed using multidimensional linear regression. Even though the resulting model only explains 9%, it is statistically significant and implies that sociodemographic variables can help explain recyclable generation. From this point of view, important variables are average household size, share of tertiary educated people, share of family houses, purchasing power per person, percentage of people employed in agriculture, and sex ratio. To increase the explained variability and emphasize local differences in recyclable generation, we also used geographically weighted regression (GWR). GWR results show that, to understand waste generation (at least in the Czech Republic) on a municipal level, it is necessary to also consider spatial effects and regional specifics.

The European regulation of biodegradable municipal waste (biowaste) treatment places a significant demand on local biowaste separation systems and consequent treatment (composting, anaerobic digestion). When implementing separate collection systems, there is a public demand for systems based on containers and bags. Based on a case study of the city Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic, the authors illustrate the difficulties encountered in the implementation of this kind of system. A series of factors should be paramount in the organization of biowaste separate collection, including the location of containers, the amount of contaminants, and system parameters (e.g. volume of containers, frequency of collection). The results obtained confirm how a precision-targeted information campaign may contribute towards reducing contamination of biowaste container content. Lower amounts of contaminants imply a simplified biowaste treatment (composting) and increased system efficiency. Furthermore, it was observed that the relocation of biowaste containers, or placing of additional containers in the system, resulted in an increase in public involvement as a result of the added convenience of separate collection proximity of containers. The equipment of the chosen city district by additional 55 containers increases the number of address points covered by the system by approx. 149.20% and the number of inhabitants by about 38.14%. However, this added convenience of separate collection is not cost-neutral, with the increased proximity of containers contributing towards a rise in collection costs including transport, and containers. The increase of collection costs ranges between 105.5 and 156.78% in comparison with the current situation.

The article aims to discuss conditions of spatial organization of elementary schools in the Czech countryside and to validate whether there is any relation between the different types of rural schools and the diverse types of rural areas. Usually, rural schools are perceived in contrast to urban schools as a homogenous group of institutions with common characteristics – despite their diversity. The article compares the typology of municipalities according to data about elementary schools with the typology of municipalities according to its societal and cultural characteristics. Based on three indicators describing main characteristics of the school network – the number of elementary schools in a municipality, their average utilization of the maximum reported capacity, the average extent of area serviced by the school – eleven types of municipalities were identified. Statistically significant connections were shown between the two typologies. Rural schools thus should not be assessed as internally homogenous group of institutions with broadly common characteristics. This is because problems that rural schools face during their existence reflect wider societal, cultural, and economic conditions of areas in which they are located.