558668
research-article2014
WMR0010.1177/0734242X14558668Waste Management & ResearchHan et al.
Original Article
Characteristics and management of domestic waste in the rural area of Southwest China
Waste Management & Research 2015, Vol. 33(1) 39–47 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0734242X14558668 wmr.sagepub.com
Zhiyong Han1, Dan Liu2, Yunhui Lei3, Jing Wu3 and Shulan Li3
Abstract With its rapid development, the rural area of Southwest China has been puzzled by the waste management problem, especially for increasing solid waste and water pollution from the domestic waste. Therefore, in order to efficiently and effectively manage the domestic waste in the rural area of Southwest China, 22 villages were selected randomly to analyse the characteristics of domestic waste, the influence factors of characteristics and resident’s willingness of participation in domestic waste management by questionnaires, field samplings and laboratory tests. The results of the rural area of Southwest China indicated that the generation of domestic waste was 178 g d−1 per capita and it was mainly composed of kitchen waste, inert waste, plastics and paper with a total proportion of 81.98%. The waste bulk density, moisture, ash, combustible and lower calorific value were 107 kg m-3, 37.04%, 25.73%, 37.23% and 8008 kJ kg−1, respectively. These characteristics were influenced by the topography, the distance from towns or cities, the villagers’ ethnicities and income sources to some extent. Moreover, the distance of 50–800 m between each collection facility and the disposal fee of around ¥5.00 per household per month could be accepted. The working hours of participation in waste management is suggested as 5 hours per day with the income of ¥1000 per capita per month. Based on the outcome of this survey, a waste management system consisting of classified collection, centralised treatment and decentralised treatment was proposed. It is important to ensure financial viability and practical considerations of this system. Keywords Southwest China, rural areas, domestic waste, waste characteristics, waste management
Introduction Southwest China is a region of the People’s Republic of China, including Chongqing municipality, Sichuan province, Yunnan province, Guizhou province and Tibet Autonomous Region. It occupies a total area of 2,361,970 km2 with a population of 192,981,185 and its gross domestic product (GDP) is up to 10.2% of China in 2012. In there, major rivers traverse or originate. For example, the Yangtze River empties in the East China Sea; the Lantsang River flows through Yunnan Province, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and finally on its way into the South China Sea; the Nujiang reaches the Indian Ocean through Yunnan Province and Burma (Niu, 2007). Therefore, the environmental health of Southwest China is of significant importance for China and other Southeast Asian countries. In recent decades, the economic development and change of lifestyles has resulted in increasing consumption of packaged and processed goods, including food and other items in the rural area of China. In 2011, 200,000 kg of domestic waste were generated in rural areas of China (He, 2012). A total of 75.9% of villages had been polluted, in which about 49.5% of villages were mainly polluted by domestic waste (Tang and
Zhuo, 2008). With the aggravation of solid waste pollution, a lot of studies have been conducted on the characteristics, treatment and management of rural solid waste in different countries (Abduli et al., 2008; Doležalová et al., 2013; Padma et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2013). On the one hand, the complex topography of Southwest China results in a wide range of climatic conditions. On the other hand, the resident’s locations, ethnicities and income sources are obviously different. All these influencing factors make not only the 1College
of Environment and Civil Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment prevention, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China 2Faculty of Geosciences and Environmental Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China 3Key Laboratory of Development and Application of Rural Renewable Energy, Biogas Institute of Ministry of Agriculture, Chengdu, China Corresponding author: Zhiyong Han, College of Environment and Civil Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology, No. 1, Erxianqiao, Dongsanlu, Chengdu 610059, China. Email: [email protected]
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Figure 1. Geographical position of investigated counties. (a) Zeng et al. (2012); (b) Wei et al. (2009) and Lu et al. (2012).
characteristics of rural solid waste (RSW) much different, but also the management of RSW very difficult in the rural area of Southwest China (RASC). Therefore, solid waste management is becoming a major concern and it is critical to construct a domestic waste management system to control the environmental contamination in the RASC.
Material and methods Survey design Investigative sites. The investigation was carried out in 22 villages (Figure 1), which were selected randomly according to the topography, locations, the distance from the nearest towns or cities, resident’s ethnicities and income sources. Moreover, eight villages in the Sichuan Basin (Zeng et al., 2012) and four villages in Chongqing (Lu et al., 2012; Wei et al., 2009) were surveyed. Survey methods and contents. In 2012, the primary source of date for this study was derived by a survey on about 10 random rural households per village with an interview-based questionnaire and a total number of 221 households were interviewed. Information was obtained on: (i) the socioeconomic characteristics of the households; (ii) the present environmental pollution and the current situation of the management, collection, transfer, treatment and disposal of domestic waste; (iii) resident choice of the mode of domestic waste collection and treatment; and (iv) resident willingness to pay for domestic waste treatment and to participate in domestic waste management.
Experimental design Sampling method. A garbage bag was provided to each interviewed household to collect all of domestic waste discharged during 2 days. Of this, 1 kg-waste was sampled as the proportion of wet composition in each village. Subsequently, it was brought back to a laboratory for testing and analysing. Testing method. The sample preparation was conducted and the bulk density, composition, moisture content, combustible and ash of samples were tested according to the ‘Sampling and Analysis Methods for Domestic Waste’ (CJ/T 313-2009) promulgated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development of the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, the calorific values of each component were cited from the typical value shown in the standard mentioned above. Data analysis. The domestic waste characteristics were analysed on the village basis, which was performed using Microsoft Excel 2007 and SPSS 19.0. It is as follows: Y = f (∑ x) where Y means the statistic on the different areas basis; x means the statistic on the village basis; and f is the calculation formula or statistic function. Paǔta criterion was used to reject outliers. It is notable also that the characteristics of domestic waste in Sichuan Basin were cited from Zeng’s study (Zeng et al., 2012) and the generation of
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100 75
pollution (33.03%) and air pollution (28.05%). It was an exception that centralised collection to sanitary landfill was the main treatment in the Sichuan Basin (Zeng et al., 2012), which has resulted in its relatively excellent facilities and good solid management supported by its better economy.
Burning Dumping randomly or to pit Centralized collection to simple landf ill Centralized collection to burning Composting f or manure
50 25
Characteristics of domestic waste Mountains and hills
YunnanGuizhou Plateau
Sichuan Basin
Qinba Mountain
Tibetan Plateau
0
Sounthwest China
Interviewees's proportion(%)
Han et al.
Figure 2. Treatment and disposal of domestic waste in the RASC. (a) Centralized collection to sanitary landfill.
domestic waste in the RASC was averaged with both this survey data and the reference data.
Results Backgrounds of investigated residents and households Based on the statistics from the survey, 82.8% of the interviewees were middle-aged because many youngsters migrated to work in cities and some of them went to study in schools or in Tibetan temples. Only 10.0% of interviewees had gotten a high school education or higher. Therefore, the interviewees’ literacy was generally low. In addition, the income of 82.3% of investigated households was less than ¥30,000 per year, which was comparatively low. Their income resources were mainly from migrant or local working (44.3%) and crop farming (34.8%). The investigated households mainly bred poultry (72.9%), pigs (58.4%), dogs (41.2%) and cattle (35.3%). Moreover, the sources of energy in their daily life were primarily derived from electricity (100%) and firewood (67.0%). Besides, biogas or natural gas (29.9%), crop stalks and straw (14.9%), coal (12.7%) and cow dung (mainly in Tibet, 13.6%) were used as energy supplements as well.
Current situation In the RASC, a special municipality for managing and controlling the environmental pollution has not been set up below the county level so far. The rural areas are suffering from a deficiency of infrastructures, appropriate legislation and the fund for environmental control, especially in the remote areas. Therefore, the solid waste services, including waste collection, transfer and disposal, are primarily rare. Practically, a significant portion of people did not have access to a waste collection service and only a fraction of the generated waste was actually collected. The collection service was mainly organised and conducted by the local village committee or by the town government. Additionally, the final disposal of domestic waste in the RASC was commonly burning randomly, dumped to the local river bank or open dumpsites, and a centralised collection to simple landfill (Figure 2), which has led to serious solid waste pollution (50.23%), water
Generation. The average generation of domestic waste in the RASC was 178 g d−1 per capita, which fluctuated remarkably from 34 g d−1 to 426 g d−1 per capita in different villages. It is obviously lower than the averages in the rural area of North China (1215 g d−1 per capita; Ji et al., 2006) and East China (255 g d−1 per capita; Liu et al., 2005). Compared with the rural area of developed countries such as Italy (1616 g d−1 per capita; Passarini et al., 2011) and Czech (829 g d−1 per capita; Doležalová et al., 2013) and compared with the rural area of developing countries such as Iran (646 g d−1 per capita; Abduli et al., 2008), the value from this study is extremely low. Physical characteristics Composition. The composition of domestic waste in the RASC is shown in Table 1. The prevailing composition of domestic waste (in wet weight percentages) includes kitchen waste, inert waste, plastics and paper, with a total proportion of 81.98%. The percentage of recyclable waste including plastics, glass, paper and metals ran up to 30.36%. The proportion of biodegradable waste was also more than 40.64%. The category ‘others’, including batteries, expired medicine and other indistinguishable waste, was only 2.15%. In addition, it is observed that the prevailing composition of domestic waste in the RASC is different from other rural areas in China and other countries. Compared with the rural areas in East China and in North China, the content of recyclable waste in the RASC is 1.65 times and 5.04 times of them, respectively, but the content of inert waste is only 47.86% and 28.36% of them, respectively. However, the content of inert waste in the RASC is still 1.52–4.46 times as much as the other countries. Bulk density and compressibility. The domestic waste in the RASC was very lightweight with bulk density of 107 kg m-3 varying from 40 kg m-3 to 324 kg m-3 among different villages. The bulk density in this survey is obviously lower than East China (210 kg m-3; Liu et al., 2005) and North China (80–520 kg m-3; Ji et al., 2006). According to the compressibility test, the domestic waste has a good compressibility below the stress of 354 kPa. The relationship between the compression ratio of domestic waste and the stress expresses a logarithmic function (shown in Figure 3). Chemical characteristics Moisture, ash and combustible content. The moisture, ash and combustible content of domestic waste in the RASC were 37.04%, 25.73% and 37.23%, respectively, which are very different from North China (43.39%, 54.16% and 2.46%; Ji et al., 2006). Based on each component proportion and its chemical characteristics, the moisture was primarily derived from kitchen
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Table 1. Comparison of domestic waste composition between the RASC and others. Composition
Southwest China
East China
North China
Italy
Czech
Iran
Fiji
Kitchen waste (%) Inert waste (%) Plastics (%) Paper (%) Wood (%) Glass (%) Textiles and leather (%) Metals (%) Others (%)
40.64 17.85b 13.96 10.55 6.46 5.19 2.54 0.66 2.15g
41.1 37.30b 9.20 6.20 1.40 1.60 1.90 0.30 1.00g Liu et al., 2005
30.20 62.93b 2.82 2.73 0.22 0.25 0.25 0.67 0.03g Ji et al., 2006
30.00a 4.00 12.00 25.00 5.00 6.00 / 3.00 15 Passarini et al., 2011
11.70a 6.80e 9.70 7.80 9.40f 4.90 2.30 2.60 44.80h Doležalová et al., 2013
42.49 11.70d 13.34 8.77 6.90 5.89 4.83 6.08 / Abduli et al., 2008
69.90 9.40c 7.50 6.40 1.00 1.70 4.10 / Padma et al., 2007
aIncluding
organic waste. ash, dirt, bricks and ceramic tiles. cIncluding ash, dirt, wood, bricks and hazardous waste. dIncluding construction and demolition. eIncluding mineral waste. fIncluding combustible waste. gIncluding batteries, expired medicine and other indistinguishable waste. hIncluding hazardous, electronic and residual waste. bIncluding
from the nearest towns or cities, ethnicities and income sources. Based on the Kruskal–Wallis test, the characteristics of domestic waste have no significant difference among different topographies; no significant difference between suburbs and remote areas; and no significant difference among different income sources as well. However, those influence factors still have some influence on the domestic waste characteristics.
Compression ratio
1.2 0.9
y = -0.07ln(x) + 0.838 R² = 0.999
0.6 0.3 0.0
0
500
1000 1500 Stress (kPa)
2000
2500
Figure 3. Compressibility of domestic waste in the RASC.
waste; the ash was mainly derived from inert waste and kitchen waste; and the combustible was derived from paper and plastics. Calorific value. The lower calorific value of domestic waste was up to 8008 kJ kg−1 in the RASC. It is obviously higher than the rural area of East China (2318 kJ kg−1; Liu et al., 2005) and North China (2280 kJ kg−1; Ji et al., 2006). Compared with Iran (5045 kJ kg−1; Abduli et al., 2008) and Czech (6800 kJ kg−1; Doležalová et al., 2013), the lower calorific value is still higher. As mentioned above, the domestic waste in the RASC has several distinctive characteristics including low generation, good compressibility and high lower calorific value. Moreover, compared with other rural areas in China, the recyclable waste and the combustible are much higher, but the inert waste is obviously smaller in the RASC.
Discussion Influence factors of domestic waste characteristics Table 2 shows the influence of different factors on characteristics of domestic waste in the RASC, including topography, distance
Topography. From Table 2, it is indicated that the generations of domestic waste in the Sichuan Basin and in other mountains and hills are the highest, which reach up to more than 250 g d−1 per capita; the generations in the Qinba Mountain and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau are medium, which are about 140 g d−1 per capita; and the generation in the Tibetan Plateau is the lowest, which is only 34.8% of the generation in the Sichuan Basin. Nevertheless, the lower calorific value of domestic waste in the Tibetan Plateau is the highest, which is about twice as much as that in the Sichuan Basin. This is owing to the lowest moisture and the relatively high content of combustible in the Tibetan Plateau. According to the this analysis of the moisture, ash and combustible, it is demonstrated that the highest kitchen content leads to the highest moisture in the Sichuan Basin. Similarly, the highest inert waste content leads to the highest ash content in the Tibetan Plateau. The percentage of recyclable waste, especially the plastic and the paper, is the highest in the Tibetan Plateau, which leads to the lowest content of bulk density. This results in the relative lack of recycling activities compared with other topographies. On the basis of the mean ranks of different topographies shown in Table 2, the characteristics of domestic waste in the Tibetan Plateau and in the Sichuan Basin are very different. In other topographies, the characteristics are similar. Distance from towns or cities. In suburbs, the generation, the content of moisture and the percentage of kitchen waste are 1.46, 1.41 and 1.14 times as many as those in remote areas, but the
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Han et al. Table 2. Influence factors of domestic waste characteristics. Characteristics
Influence factors
Topography
TP
Distance from towns or cities
QBM SCB
YGP
MH
Ethnicity
Suburbs Remote Minority Han areas
Generationa 93 137 267 149 253 193 65 112 – 106 197 111 Bulk densityb 19.2 35.8 52.4 39.2 48.0 44.8 Moisturec 44.9 26.5 – 18.9 28.2 23.3 Ashc 35.9 37.7 – 41.9 23.8 31.9 Combustiblec 10,538 8841 5176 7615 6049 7194 lower calorific valued 16.2 34.1 60.9 52.0 39.4 43.7 Kitchen wastec 11.3 12.7 13.6 1.0 8.9 10.5 Paperc 21.3 17.7 7.2 11.5 9.5 13.2 Plasticsc 4.7 2.1 1.6 2.6 0.8 2.4 Textiles and leatherc 6.2 0.5 0.8 7.4 10.8 8.3 Wood and bambooc 20.1 25.9 11.7 12.6 15.3 12.4 Ash and dirtc 3.1 1.6 0.00 0.00 1.1 0.8 Bricks and ceramic tilesc 14.9 4.2 1.0 2.3 5.1 4.9 Glassc 1.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.3 0.5 Metalsc 0.8 0.8 2.8 0.9 8.8 3.3 Othersc Mean rank 41.7 39.4 33.7 38.8 40.4 16.4 0.907 0.970 Sig. e
Income source CFLB
MLW SB
132 98 230 186 168 248 103 82 139 126 111 61 31.8 31.8 42.8 41.4 36.0 23.9 27.1 33.3 23.3 26.5 24.7 21.6 41.1 34.9 33.9 32.1 39.3 54.49 8607 10,302 6837 6877 8002 11,187 38.3 41.0 44.5 45.6 43.5 28.0 10.6 12.5 9.8 9.0 10.9 16.5 14.6 19.9 10.6 11.6 14.2 16.7 2.6 4.5 1.0 0.7 3.2 5.2 5.0 4.3 7.6 7.3 3.0 11.3 20.2 15.0 19.2 17.1 17.0 17.2 1.2 1.8 0.8 0.4 1.3 1.3 5.4 12.6 3.2 4.7 5.7 1.9 0.8 1.3 0.2 0.5 0.5 1.4 1.3 1.1 3.1 3.1 0.7 0.5 16.6 17.0 16.0 24.2 24.4 24.9 0.763 0.990
CFLB: crop farming or livestock breeding; MH: Mountains and Hills; MLW: migrant or local working; QBM: Qinba Mountain; SB: service or business; SCB: Sichuan Basin; TP: Tibetan Plateau; YGP: Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. a2Units: g d−1 per capita. b3Units: kg m-3. c4Units: %. d5Units: kJ kg−1. e6Sig. of Kruskal–Wallis test.
content of combustible, the calorific value, the percentage of ash and dirt are relatively lower. Other characteristics are similar. Income sources. The income sources of investigated households mainly influence the characteristics of domestic waste on the composition owing to their different productive and consumptive activities, habits and customs. Therefore, the domestic waste composition of the households whose income mostly depends on the service or business has a higher percentage of paper and plastics, but a lower percentage of kitchen waste compared with the households whose income mostly depends on the crop farming or livestock breeding and migrant or local working. Therefore, the characteristics of composition lead to the highest generation of 248 g d−1 per capita and the highest calorific value of 11,187 kJ kg−1, the lowest bulk density and moisture in the households earned from service or business. Ethnicities. Because most of minorities live in remote areas, the recyclers hardly reach them to collect the recyclable waste, such as paper, plastics, glass and so on, which results in a higher calorific value and a lower bulk density in the minority villages than in the Han nationality villages. The generation of domestic waste in the minority villages is only 42.61% of the generation in the Han nationality villages because of the difference of people’s habits and customs.
In other words, those differences of chemical and physical characteristics are mainly owing to a lot of factors, including the difference of the climate, the current situation of waste management, people’s productive and consumptive activities, the economic development level and people’s habits and customs (Wei et al., 2009) and so on.
Management of domestic waste Collection and transfer. Waste collection strategies represent a major issue in an environmentally efficient system, since they can significantly affect the recycling targets (Chowdhury, 2009; De Jaeger and Rogge, 2013; Passarini et al., 2011). It is notable that there is an abundance of recyclable domestic waste in the RASC, such as beer bottles, soft drink bottles, cardboard and so forth, especially in the Tibetan Plateau and the Qinba Mountain. Although most of the resident could not identify the recyclable waste, 90.05% of interviewees were willing to sort waste, which can be sold to the recyclers. If the recyclable waste could be sold for ¥2.00 per kilogram, 88.24% of interviewees were willing to send the recyclable waste to the fixed recycling station. It is indicated that the economic driving force of classified collection are very strong for peasants in the RASC. According to a previous report, it is mainly owing to the
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redemption value of the recyclables (Chung and Poon, 2001; Miafodzyeva et al., 2013). If the rural dwellers practice more responsible waste management, they can expect to ‘save’ an economic loss of about $22 per rural household per year (Padma et al., 2007). Therefore, waste sorting has easily been taken on board by most rural communities without too much need for raising awareness. Practically, not only did peasants drive to sort recyclable waste, but also many recyclers drove regularly to the villages where they could easily collect the high value items of recyclable waste. However, the phenomenon was uncommon in most remote areas of RASC. The reason is that it is uneconomic to collect the recyclable waste in the remote areas, therefore, many recyclers or recycling companies need to be subsidised or offered tax privileges by government when they are able to be engaged on a trial basis to collect the recyclable waste. Referring to the collection of domestic waste, the investigated results indicated that a majority of interviewees (95.02%) were willing to dump their domestic waste into collection facilities. However, the infrastructures were still weak in most of villages, which had restrained the waste from recycling. Thus, it is very important that the government should enhance the constructions and investments of infrastructures and the inter-municipal cooperation in the RASC. Resident’s acceptable distance to dump domestic waste must be considered when building the collection facilities, because the relationship between the percentage of people who would like to dump and the dumping distance shows a linear negative correlation (y = –10.45x + 50.09, R² = 0.907). The distance of 50–800 m is a proper alternative within which 91.86% of interviewees were willing to dump their domestic waste into the collection facilities. More importantly for policy-makers, the concern should not be only on whether the public knows how to separate the waste, but also on the methods of how to motivate them to separate waste for the good effect of society and how to maintain an effective market for recyclables. Treatment and disposal. Based on the questionnaires, about 62.90% of interviewees would collectively treat domestic waste by village committee rather than by themselves. This means that in the rural areas, the support and the popularity of the centralised treatment of domestic waste are even more prominent than the decentralised treatment. Practically, in some developed countries, such as in the rural area of England, marketing activities of centralised treatment of waste have been extremely successful (Ackroyd et al., 2008). However, in most of developing countries, the treatment of domestic waste is still primitive. Being similar to Fiji in the southwest Pacific Ocean (Padma et al., 2007) and India (Gowda et al., 1995), burning, burying and throwing of wastes are the most common waste ‘disposal’ method in the RASC. Currently, only 24.43% of investigated households discharged unsorted domestic waste to the simple landfill. Except in the Sichuan Basin, the sanitary landfill is hardly available in the RASC because it is uneconomic. But in some special villages, the
sanitary landfill is needed if these villages are under the following conditions: (i) the population is enough to achieve good economic returns; (ii) the surroundings are very sensitive and fragile; (iii) the villages are located in the centre of many intensive villages. In addition, if a village is close to a town centre or city where the landfill can be available, a transfer station should be built in there to transfer domestic waste to the neighbouring landfill. It is worthwhile to note that composting has been practiced for a long time, although it is considered as an extra daily chore. If a large amount of organic waste could be collected from the villages to compost or to ferment, the organic fertiliser made from those processes would have a wide market perspective in the RASC, because 77.83% of interviewees could accept the matures and 69.68% of interviewees were willing to pay between ¥0.6 and ¥1.0 per kilogram. In the RASC, most of inert waste, such as ash and dirt, are commonly returned into farmland, and some of them, such as bricks and ceramic tiles, can be filled in a special site or be used as paving materials. The biogas plant (Song et al., 2014), the bioreactor landfill (Li et al., 2011) and the semi-aerobic landfill (Yang and Zha, 2008) also have been approved to be effective techniques to treat domestic waste in the rural area. Although the temperature is very low in the Tibetan Plateau in winter owing to the high altitude, the plateau region is a rich solar energy resource that can be used to preserve heat (Feng et al., 2008). However, the incineration is not considered as a suitable way to treat domestic waste in the RASC, though the lower calorific value of domestic waste can completely meet the requirement of incineration. The reasons are: (i) the incineration plant is too expensive to be built and operated; (ii) excellent technologists and supervisors are so scarce; (iii) the flue gas of incinerators is extremely dangerous and it is difficult to control. Management. In rural areas, residents primarily perceive the pollution of domestic waste from their senses, hence it is often the visual impact of waste around households that will be seen as the main reason for domestic solid waste management practices. Therefore, 85.07% of interviewees thought that the domestic waste needed to be treated. Moreover, they expected that the service occurred regularly and that domestic waste was managed appropriately. Actually, rural waste management options are limited in the RASC because of the small population size, the geographical distribution of households or villages, and limited resources. For villages and settlements near urban areas, the most logical approach could be to link up with existing waste removal and disposal system operating in nearby urban areas. One of the successful examples is the waste management in Sichuan Basin.
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Interviewees's proportion(%)
Han et al.
80 60
(iii) a localised mini landfill for a cluster of villages and or settlements.
People's acceptable working hour (hour) 4 6 8 10
2
y = -13.66x + 81.22 R² = 0.995
Working hours per day
40 20
Income per month
y = 40.17ln(x) + 5.881 R² = 0.977
0 500
800 1200 1500 people's expectant income (᪳)
≥1500
Figure 4. Relationship of resident’s willingness, working hours and expectant income to participate in waste management.
But for the remote rural areas, a regular commercial collection of domestic waste could not be financially feasible, hence, at present, the disposal of domestic waste only depends on a localised mini landfill for a cluster of villages or settlements, which is supported by the local and state governments. In rural areas where there are no municipalities, waste collection and disposal services are unavailable and residents do not need to pay for the services. So the residents can only resolve the problems by burying, simple burning, discharging onto river banks and disposing illegally in nearby landfills. Luckily, 69.68% of households were willing to pay a lower of ¥5.00 per month for collection and removal services of domestic waste, but about one-third of interviewees were not willing to pay anything. Therefore, the domestic waste disposal fee of per rural household could be accepted at around ¥5.00 per month and a demonstration or a mandatory village/settlement-based waste collection and disposal system should be developed. Solid waste management is a complex task. Hence, for such a system running effectively, villages and settlements can collectively negotiate a regular arrangement of waste management and each village needs to define a central location where the waste bins are kept together with a regular local collection arrangement. Since 66.52% of interviewees, mainly composed of the middle-aged people, were willing to participate in the waste clean and management, operationally the domestic waste management will be relatively easy in the RASC. In there, the local village committee can be used to establish and operate the waste collection system. Based on the relationship of resident’s willingness, working hours and expectant income for participating in waste management in the RASC (Figure 4), it is suggested that the work time of participation in waste management should be 5 h per day with the income of ¥1000 per month. In conclusion, based on the study by Padma et al. (2007) and the current situation of the RASC, options for rural domestic waste management are: (i) a partially subsidised rural–urban tandem residual waste collection and disposal system; (ii) a localised transfer station linked to an urban waste landfill site;
Regardless of which system is selected, in the design of the system it is important to ensure financial viability and practical considerations of: (i) collection and transfer of residual wastes and recyclable material to waste bins under the rural–urban tandem system, transfer stations or mini landfill sites; (ii) local village or settlement-based fee collection and/or payment system (around ¥5.00 per month would be accepted); (iii) local village or settlement-based monitoring and enforcement of waste separation, recycling, disposal and collection systems (which are established mainly depending on the local government and the environmental education). A propositional waste management system in the RASC is shown in Figure 5.
Conclusions The RASC is experiencing waste management problems similar to other villages in developing countries. The water pollution and the solid waste pollution relating to the domestic waste are very common. The results indicated that there were some distinctive features of domestic waste in the RASC, such as low generation, good compressibility and high lower-calorific value compared with other rural areas. Although there are no significant differences among influence factors, the topography and the distance from towns or cities of the investigated villages, the villagers’ ethnicities and income sources have some influences on the characteristics of domestic waste to a certain extent. Based on the above discussion, the classified collection plays an important role in the management of domestic waste, hence sorting organics, recyclables and inert waste should be promoted widely on the household and village basis. Then the collection and transfer of recyclable matters are mainly depended on the recyclers or material recycling companies, which should be subsidised or offered tax privileges by the local and state governments. The residues can be collected for centralised treatment by village committees or for decentralised treatment by households, but it is better to treat domestic waste by the centralised way in the villages where the population is large or the distances from other neighbour villages or cities are close. The distance between each collection facility is considered properly as between 50 m and 800 m. The work time of participation in waste management is suggested as 5 h per day with the income of ¥1000 per month. Referring to treatment and disposal, mixed domestic waste is suitable to be treated and disposed of with landfills or existing landfills; organic waste can be composted or fermented to produce energy and fertiliser; inert waste can be returned into farmland or be filled. Moreover, the bioreactor landfill has been
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Waste Management & Research 33(1) Household
Household
Suburbs
Transferring
Mini Landfill & Bioreactor landfill
Organics
Others
Composting & biogas tank
Back to farmland
Collecting
Recycling companies
Organics
Village committee
Recyclables
Composting& biogas plants
Others
Organics
Village committee
Private recyclers
Sorting
Others
Collecting
Recyclables
Back to farmland
Recyclables
Others
Composting & biogas tank
Organics
Sorting
Recyclables
Remote areas
Composting& biogas plants
Transferring
Transfer station
Neighboring Villages
Subsidizing
Resources utilizing
State & local Government
Transferring
Neighboring Villages
Town & county Subsidizing
Neighboring landfill or other facilities
Figure 5. Propositional waste management system in the RASC.
approved as an effective technique, but incineration is not considered as a suitable way to treat domestic waste in the RASC. Moreover, the efficiency and effect of the proposed waste management system, which was combined with the classified collection, centralised and decentralised treatment, still needs to be proved by practice.
Acknowledgements We all would like to acknowledge the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Research Institutes of China and the Cultivating Program of Middle-Aged Key Teachers of Chengdu University of Technology and thank Doctor Jiannan Cheng for his support on language correction.
Declaration of conflicting interests The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding This study received funding from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Research Institutes of China [No. 2012ZL004] and the Cultivating Program of Middle-Aged Key Teachers of Chengdu University of Technology [No. KYGG201406].
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resource efficiency (betre) rural in East Sussex, England. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52(6): 896–908. Chowdhury M (2009) Sustainable kerbside recycling in the municipal garbage contract. Waste Management & Research 27(10): 988–995. Chung SS and Poon CS (2001) A comparison of waste-reduction practices and new environmental paradigm of rural and urban Chinese citizens. Journal of Environmental Management 62(1): 3–19. De Jaeger S and Rogge N (2013) Waste pricing policies and cost-efficiency in municipal waste services: the case of Flanders. Waste Management & Research 31(7): 751–758. Doležalová M, Benešová L and Závodská A (2013) The changing character of household waste in the Czech Republic between 1999 and 2009 as a function of home heating methods. Waste Management 33(9): 1950– 1957. Feng TT, Cheng SK, Ming WQ, et al. (2008) Biogas energy model and benefit analysis in Shigatse Prefecture of Tibet. Resource Science 30(9): 1313–1319. Gowda MC, Raghavan GSV and Ranganna B (1995) Rural waste management in a south Indian village – A case study. Bioresource Technology 53(2): 157–164. He PJ (2012) Municipal solid waste in rural areas of developing country: Do we need special treatment mode? Waste Management 32(7): 1289–1290. Ji CZ, Zhang Y and Shui RN (2006) Characters investigation and pollution control of typical village domestic waste in Shenyang. Environmental Sanitation Engineering 14(2): 51–54. Li WB, Yao J, Tao PP, et al. (2011) An innovative combined on-site process for the remote rural solid waste treatment – A pilot scale case study in China. Bioresource Technology 102(5): 4117–4123. Liu YD, He PJ and Shao LM (2005) Production and feature of rural domestic waste in Tailake Region of China. Journal of Agro-Environment Science 24(3): 533–537. Lu JT, Peng QH and Peng XY (2012) Investigate on current situation of rural domestic waste and treatment alternatives in the Three Gorges Reservoir – Case study of Changda village of Dianjiang. Environment and Ecology in the Three Gorge 34(3): 3–7.
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Han et al. Miafodzyeva S, Brandt N and Andersson M (2013) Recycling behaviour of householders living in multicultural urban area: a case study of Järva, Stockholm, Sweden. Waste Management & Research 31(5): 447–457. Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development of the People’s Republic of China. (2009) Sampling and Analysis Methods for Domestic Waste (CJ/T 313-2009). Niu XX (2007) Study on resource environment sustain system of southwest economic development. Master’s thesis, Yunnan Normal University. Padma L, Margaret T and Sandeep KS (2007) Economics of rural waste management in the Rewa Province and development of a rural solid waste management policy for Fiji. IWP-Pacific Technical Report (International Waters Project) no. 57. Apia, Samoa: SPREP. Available at: http://www. sprep.org/att/publication/000574_IWP_PTR57.pdf (accessed 29 October 2014). Passarini F, Vassura I, Monti F, et al. (2011) Indicators of waste management efficiency related to different territorial conditions. Waste Management 31(4): 785–792.
Song ZL, Zhang C, Yang GH, et al. (2014) Comparison of biogas development from households and medium and large-scale biogas plants in rural China. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 33: 204–213. Tang LX and Zhuo T (2008) Survey and analysis of environmental examination in 141 villages of China. China Rural Survey 1: 31–38. Wei X, Peng XY, Jia CX, et al. (2009) Analysis on characteristics of rural domestic waste in the Three Gorges Reservoir. Journal of Anhui Agricultural Sciences 37(16): 7610–7612, 7707. Wu D, Zhang CY, Lü F, et al. (2014) The operation of cost-effective onsite process for the bio-treatment of mixed municipal solid waste in rural areas. Waste Management 34(6): 999–1005. Yang QY and Zha K (2008) Experimental study on heavy metal variation characteristics of domestic waste from Tibetan Plateau in semi-aerobic landfill treatment. Journal of Anhui Agricultural Science 36(27): 11988– 11990, 12031. Zeng XL, Liu D, Han ZY, et al. (2012) Investigation of rural solid waste and discussion of disposal model in typical area of Chengdu. Guangdong Agricultural Sciences 18: 211–214.
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WMR0010.1177/0734242X15569414Waste Management & Research
Corrigendum Waste Management & Research 2015, Vol. 33(3) 300 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0734242X15569414 wmr.sagepub.com
Corrigendum
Characteristics and management of domestic waste in the rural area of Southwest China by Zhiyong Han et al., Waste Manag Res January 2015 33: 39–47, doi:10.1177/0734242X14558668. In the above paper Figure 4 was printed incorrectly. The correct version is published below. The authors apologize for this error.
People's acceptable working hour (hour)
Interviewees's proportion(%)
569414
other2015
80
2
4
6
8
10
y = -13.66x + 81.22 R² = 0.995
60
Income per month
40 20
Working hours per day
y = 40.17ln(x) + 5.881 R² = 0.977
0 500
800
1200
1500
≥1500
people's expectant income (᪳)
Figure 4. Relationship of people’s willingness, working hours and expectant income to participate in waste management.
research-article2014
WMR0010.1177/0734242X14558668Waste Management & ResearchHan et al.
Original Article
Characteristics and management of domestic waste in the rural area of Southwest China
Waste Management & Research 2015, Vol. 33(1) 39–47 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0734242X14558668 wmr.sagepub.com
Zhiyong Han1, Dan Liu2, Yunhui Lei3, Jing Wu3 and Shulan Li3
Abstract With its rapid development, the rural area of Southwest China has been puzzled by the waste management problem, especially for increasing solid waste and water pollution from the domestic waste. Therefore, in order to efficiently and effectively manage the domestic waste in the rural area of Southwest China, 22 villages were selected randomly to analyse the characteristics of domestic waste, the influence factors of characteristics and resident’s willingness of participation in domestic waste management by questionnaires, field samplings and laboratory tests. The results of the rural area of Southwest China indicated that the generation of domestic waste was 178 g d−1 per capita and it was mainly composed of kitchen waste, inert waste, plastics and paper with a total proportion of 81.98%. The waste bulk density, moisture, ash, combustible and lower calorific value were 107 kg m-3, 37.04%, 25.73%, 37.23% and 8008 kJ kg−1, respectively. These characteristics were influenced by the topography, the distance from towns or cities, the villagers’ ethnicities and income sources to some extent. Moreover, the distance of 50–800 m between each collection facility and the disposal fee of around ¥5.00 per household per month could be accepted. The working hours of participation in waste management is suggested as 5 hours per day with the income of ¥1000 per capita per month. Based on the outcome of this survey, a waste management system consisting of classified collection, centralised treatment and decentralised treatment was proposed. It is important to ensure financial viability and practical considerations of this system. Keywords Southwest China, rural areas, domestic waste, waste characteristics, waste management
Introduction Southwest China is a region of the People’s Republic of China, including Chongqing municipality, Sichuan province, Yunnan province, Guizhou province and Tibet Autonomous Region. It occupies a total area of 2,361,970 km2 with a population of 192,981,185 and its gross domestic product (GDP) is up to 10.2% of China in 2012. In there, major rivers traverse or originate. For example, the Yangtze River empties in the East China Sea; the Lantsang River flows through Yunnan Province, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and finally on its way into the South China Sea; the Nujiang reaches the Indian Ocean through Yunnan Province and Burma (Niu, 2007). Therefore, the environmental health of Southwest China is of significant importance for China and other Southeast Asian countries. In recent decades, the economic development and change of lifestyles has resulted in increasing consumption of packaged and processed goods, including food and other items in the rural area of China. In 2011, 200,000 kg of domestic waste were generated in rural areas of China (He, 2012). A total of 75.9% of villages had been polluted, in which about 49.5% of villages were mainly polluted by domestic waste (Tang and
Zhuo, 2008). With the aggravation of solid waste pollution, a lot of studies have been conducted on the characteristics, treatment and management of rural solid waste in different countries (Abduli et al., 2008; Doležalová et al., 2013; Padma et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2013). On the one hand, the complex topography of Southwest China results in a wide range of climatic conditions. On the other hand, the resident’s locations, ethnicities and income sources are obviously different. All these influencing factors make not only the 1College
of Environment and Civil Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment prevention, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China 2Faculty of Geosciences and Environmental Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China 3Key Laboratory of Development and Application of Rural Renewable Energy, Biogas Institute of Ministry of Agriculture, Chengdu, China Corresponding author: Zhiyong Han, College of Environment and Civil Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology, No. 1, Erxianqiao, Dongsanlu, Chengdu 610059, China. Email: [email protected]
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Figure 1. Geographical position of investigated counties. (a) Zeng et al. (2012); (b) Wei et al. (2009) and Lu et al. (2012).
characteristics of rural solid waste (RSW) much different, but also the management of RSW very difficult in the rural area of Southwest China (RASC). Therefore, solid waste management is becoming a major concern and it is critical to construct a domestic waste management system to control the environmental contamination in the RASC.
Material and methods Survey design Investigative sites. The investigation was carried out in 22 villages (Figure 1), which were selected randomly according to the topography, locations, the distance from the nearest towns or cities, resident’s ethnicities and income sources. Moreover, eight villages in the Sichuan Basin (Zeng et al., 2012) and four villages in Chongqing (Lu et al., 2012; Wei et al., 2009) were surveyed. Survey methods and contents. In 2012, the primary source of date for this study was derived by a survey on about 10 random rural households per village with an interview-based questionnaire and a total number of 221 households were interviewed. Information was obtained on: (i) the socioeconomic characteristics of the households; (ii) the present environmental pollution and the current situation of the management, collection, transfer, treatment and disposal of domestic waste; (iii) resident choice of the mode of domestic waste collection and treatment; and (iv) resident willingness to pay for domestic waste treatment and to participate in domestic waste management.
Experimental design Sampling method. A garbage bag was provided to each interviewed household to collect all of domestic waste discharged during 2 days. Of this, 1 kg-waste was sampled as the proportion of wet composition in each village. Subsequently, it was brought back to a laboratory for testing and analysing. Testing method. The sample preparation was conducted and the bulk density, composition, moisture content, combustible and ash of samples were tested according to the ‘Sampling and Analysis Methods for Domestic Waste’ (CJ/T 313-2009) promulgated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development of the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, the calorific values of each component were cited from the typical value shown in the standard mentioned above. Data analysis. The domestic waste characteristics were analysed on the village basis, which was performed using Microsoft Excel 2007 and SPSS 19.0. It is as follows: Y = f (∑ x) where Y means the statistic on the different areas basis; x means the statistic on the village basis; and f is the calculation formula or statistic function. Paǔta criterion was used to reject outliers. It is notable also that the characteristics of domestic waste in Sichuan Basin were cited from Zeng’s study (Zeng et al., 2012) and the generation of
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100 75
pollution (33.03%) and air pollution (28.05%). It was an exception that centralised collection to sanitary landfill was the main treatment in the Sichuan Basin (Zeng et al., 2012), which has resulted in its relatively excellent facilities and good solid management supported by its better economy.
Burning Dumping randomly or to pit Centralized collection to simple landf ill Centralized collection to burning Composting f or manure
50 25
Characteristics of domestic waste Mountains and hills
YunnanGuizhou Plateau
Sichuan Basin
Qinba Mountain
Tibetan Plateau
0
Sounthwest China
Interviewees's proportion(%)
Han et al.
Figure 2. Treatment and disposal of domestic waste in the RASC. (a) Centralized collection to sanitary landfill.
domestic waste in the RASC was averaged with both this survey data and the reference data.
Results Backgrounds of investigated residents and households Based on the statistics from the survey, 82.8% of the interviewees were middle-aged because many youngsters migrated to work in cities and some of them went to study in schools or in Tibetan temples. Only 10.0% of interviewees had gotten a high school education or higher. Therefore, the interviewees’ literacy was generally low. In addition, the income of 82.3% of investigated households was less than ¥30,000 per year, which was comparatively low. Their income resources were mainly from migrant or local working (44.3%) and crop farming (34.8%). The investigated households mainly bred poultry (72.9%), pigs (58.4%), dogs (41.2%) and cattle (35.3%). Moreover, the sources of energy in their daily life were primarily derived from electricity (100%) and firewood (67.0%). Besides, biogas or natural gas (29.9%), crop stalks and straw (14.9%), coal (12.7%) and cow dung (mainly in Tibet, 13.6%) were used as energy supplements as well.
Current situation In the RASC, a special municipality for managing and controlling the environmental pollution has not been set up below the county level so far. The rural areas are suffering from a deficiency of infrastructures, appropriate legislation and the fund for environmental control, especially in the remote areas. Therefore, the solid waste services, including waste collection, transfer and disposal, are primarily rare. Practically, a significant portion of people did not have access to a waste collection service and only a fraction of the generated waste was actually collected. The collection service was mainly organised and conducted by the local village committee or by the town government. Additionally, the final disposal of domestic waste in the RASC was commonly burning randomly, dumped to the local river bank or open dumpsites, and a centralised collection to simple landfill (Figure 2), which has led to serious solid waste pollution (50.23%), water
Generation. The average generation of domestic waste in the RASC was 178 g d−1 per capita, which fluctuated remarkably from 34 g d−1 to 426 g d−1 per capita in different villages. It is obviously lower than the averages in the rural area of North China (1215 g d−1 per capita; Ji et al., 2006) and East China (255 g d−1 per capita; Liu et al., 2005). Compared with the rural area of developed countries such as Italy (1616 g d−1 per capita; Passarini et al., 2011) and Czech (829 g d−1 per capita; Doležalová et al., 2013) and compared with the rural area of developing countries such as Iran (646 g d−1 per capita; Abduli et al., 2008), the value from this study is extremely low. Physical characteristics Composition. The composition of domestic waste in the RASC is shown in Table 1. The prevailing composition of domestic waste (in wet weight percentages) includes kitchen waste, inert waste, plastics and paper, with a total proportion of 81.98%. The percentage of recyclable waste including plastics, glass, paper and metals ran up to 30.36%. The proportion of biodegradable waste was also more than 40.64%. The category ‘others’, including batteries, expired medicine and other indistinguishable waste, was only 2.15%. In addition, it is observed that the prevailing composition of domestic waste in the RASC is different from other rural areas in China and other countries. Compared with the rural areas in East China and in North China, the content of recyclable waste in the RASC is 1.65 times and 5.04 times of them, respectively, but the content of inert waste is only 47.86% and 28.36% of them, respectively. However, the content of inert waste in the RASC is still 1.52–4.46 times as much as the other countries. Bulk density and compressibility. The domestic waste in the RASC was very lightweight with bulk density of 107 kg m-3 varying from 40 kg m-3 to 324 kg m-3 among different villages. The bulk density in this survey is obviously lower than East China (210 kg m-3; Liu et al., 2005) and North China (80–520 kg m-3; Ji et al., 2006). According to the compressibility test, the domestic waste has a good compressibility below the stress of 354 kPa. The relationship between the compression ratio of domestic waste and the stress expresses a logarithmic function (shown in Figure 3). Chemical characteristics Moisture, ash and combustible content. The moisture, ash and combustible content of domestic waste in the RASC were 37.04%, 25.73% and 37.23%, respectively, which are very different from North China (43.39%, 54.16% and 2.46%; Ji et al., 2006). Based on each component proportion and its chemical characteristics, the moisture was primarily derived from kitchen
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Table 1. Comparison of domestic waste composition between the RASC and others. Composition
Southwest China
East China
North China
Italy
Czech
Iran
Fiji
Kitchen waste (%) Inert waste (%) Plastics (%) Paper (%) Wood (%) Glass (%) Textiles and leather (%) Metals (%) Others (%)
40.64 17.85b 13.96 10.55 6.46 5.19 2.54 0.66 2.15g
41.1 37.30b 9.20 6.20 1.40 1.60 1.90 0.30 1.00g Liu et al., 2005
30.20 62.93b 2.82 2.73 0.22 0.25 0.25 0.67 0.03g Ji et al., 2006
30.00a 4.00 12.00 25.00 5.00 6.00 / 3.00 15 Passarini et al., 2011
11.70a 6.80e 9.70 7.80 9.40f 4.90 2.30 2.60 44.80h Doležalová et al., 2013
42.49 11.70d 13.34 8.77 6.90 5.89 4.83 6.08 / Abduli et al., 2008
69.90 9.40c 7.50 6.40 1.00 1.70 4.10 / Padma et al., 2007
aIncluding
organic waste. ash, dirt, bricks and ceramic tiles. cIncluding ash, dirt, wood, bricks and hazardous waste. dIncluding construction and demolition. eIncluding mineral waste. fIncluding combustible waste. gIncluding batteries, expired medicine and other indistinguishable waste. hIncluding hazardous, electronic and residual waste. bIncluding
from the nearest towns or cities, ethnicities and income sources. Based on the Kruskal–Wallis test, the characteristics of domestic waste have no significant difference among different topographies; no significant difference between suburbs and remote areas; and no significant difference among different income sources as well. However, those influence factors still have some influence on the domestic waste characteristics.
Compression ratio
1.2 0.9
y = -0.07ln(x) + 0.838 R² = 0.999
0.6 0.3 0.0
0
500
1000 1500 Stress (kPa)
2000
2500
Figure 3. Compressibility of domestic waste in the RASC.
waste; the ash was mainly derived from inert waste and kitchen waste; and the combustible was derived from paper and plastics. Calorific value. The lower calorific value of domestic waste was up to 8008 kJ kg−1 in the RASC. It is obviously higher than the rural area of East China (2318 kJ kg−1; Liu et al., 2005) and North China (2280 kJ kg−1; Ji et al., 2006). Compared with Iran (5045 kJ kg−1; Abduli et al., 2008) and Czech (6800 kJ kg−1; Doležalová et al., 2013), the lower calorific value is still higher. As mentioned above, the domestic waste in the RASC has several distinctive characteristics including low generation, good compressibility and high lower calorific value. Moreover, compared with other rural areas in China, the recyclable waste and the combustible are much higher, but the inert waste is obviously smaller in the RASC.
Discussion Influence factors of domestic waste characteristics Table 2 shows the influence of different factors on characteristics of domestic waste in the RASC, including topography, distance
Topography. From Table 2, it is indicated that the generations of domestic waste in the Sichuan Basin and in other mountains and hills are the highest, which reach up to more than 250 g d−1 per capita; the generations in the Qinba Mountain and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau are medium, which are about 140 g d−1 per capita; and the generation in the Tibetan Plateau is the lowest, which is only 34.8% of the generation in the Sichuan Basin. Nevertheless, the lower calorific value of domestic waste in the Tibetan Plateau is the highest, which is about twice as much as that in the Sichuan Basin. This is owing to the lowest moisture and the relatively high content of combustible in the Tibetan Plateau. According to the this analysis of the moisture, ash and combustible, it is demonstrated that the highest kitchen content leads to the highest moisture in the Sichuan Basin. Similarly, the highest inert waste content leads to the highest ash content in the Tibetan Plateau. The percentage of recyclable waste, especially the plastic and the paper, is the highest in the Tibetan Plateau, which leads to the lowest content of bulk density. This results in the relative lack of recycling activities compared with other topographies. On the basis of the mean ranks of different topographies shown in Table 2, the characteristics of domestic waste in the Tibetan Plateau and in the Sichuan Basin are very different. In other topographies, the characteristics are similar. Distance from towns or cities. In suburbs, the generation, the content of moisture and the percentage of kitchen waste are 1.46, 1.41 and 1.14 times as many as those in remote areas, but the
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Han et al. Table 2. Influence factors of domestic waste characteristics. Characteristics
Influence factors
Topography
TP
Distance from towns or cities
QBM SCB
YGP
MH
Ethnicity
Suburbs Remote Minority Han areas
Generationa 93 137 267 149 253 193 65 112 – 106 197 111 Bulk densityb 19.2 35.8 52.4 39.2 48.0 44.8 Moisturec 44.9 26.5 – 18.9 28.2 23.3 Ashc 35.9 37.7 – 41.9 23.8 31.9 Combustiblec 10,538 8841 5176 7615 6049 7194 lower calorific valued 16.2 34.1 60.9 52.0 39.4 43.7 Kitchen wastec 11.3 12.7 13.6 1.0 8.9 10.5 Paperc 21.3 17.7 7.2 11.5 9.5 13.2 Plasticsc 4.7 2.1 1.6 2.6 0.8 2.4 Textiles and leatherc 6.2 0.5 0.8 7.4 10.8 8.3 Wood and bambooc 20.1 25.9 11.7 12.6 15.3 12.4 Ash and dirtc 3.1 1.6 0.00 0.00 1.1 0.8 Bricks and ceramic tilesc 14.9 4.2 1.0 2.3 5.1 4.9 Glassc 1.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.3 0.5 Metalsc 0.8 0.8 2.8 0.9 8.8 3.3 Othersc Mean rank 41.7 39.4 33.7 38.8 40.4 16.4 0.907 0.970 Sig. e
Income source CFLB
MLW SB
132 98 230 186 168 248 103 82 139 126 111 61 31.8 31.8 42.8 41.4 36.0 23.9 27.1 33.3 23.3 26.5 24.7 21.6 41.1 34.9 33.9 32.1 39.3 54.49 8607 10,302 6837 6877 8002 11,187 38.3 41.0 44.5 45.6 43.5 28.0 10.6 12.5 9.8 9.0 10.9 16.5 14.6 19.9 10.6 11.6 14.2 16.7 2.6 4.5 1.0 0.7 3.2 5.2 5.0 4.3 7.6 7.3 3.0 11.3 20.2 15.0 19.2 17.1 17.0 17.2 1.2 1.8 0.8 0.4 1.3 1.3 5.4 12.6 3.2 4.7 5.7 1.9 0.8 1.3 0.2 0.5 0.5 1.4 1.3 1.1 3.1 3.1 0.7 0.5 16.6 17.0 16.0 24.2 24.4 24.9 0.763 0.990
CFLB: crop farming or livestock breeding; MH: Mountains and Hills; MLW: migrant or local working; QBM: Qinba Mountain; SB: service or business; SCB: Sichuan Basin; TP: Tibetan Plateau; YGP: Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. a2Units: g d−1 per capita. b3Units: kg m-3. c4Units: %. d5Units: kJ kg−1. e6Sig. of Kruskal–Wallis test.
content of combustible, the calorific value, the percentage of ash and dirt are relatively lower. Other characteristics are similar. Income sources. The income sources of investigated households mainly influence the characteristics of domestic waste on the composition owing to their different productive and consumptive activities, habits and customs. Therefore, the domestic waste composition of the households whose income mostly depends on the service or business has a higher percentage of paper and plastics, but a lower percentage of kitchen waste compared with the households whose income mostly depends on the crop farming or livestock breeding and migrant or local working. Therefore, the characteristics of composition lead to the highest generation of 248 g d−1 per capita and the highest calorific value of 11,187 kJ kg−1, the lowest bulk density and moisture in the households earned from service or business. Ethnicities. Because most of minorities live in remote areas, the recyclers hardly reach them to collect the recyclable waste, such as paper, plastics, glass and so on, which results in a higher calorific value and a lower bulk density in the minority villages than in the Han nationality villages. The generation of domestic waste in the minority villages is only 42.61% of the generation in the Han nationality villages because of the difference of people’s habits and customs.
In other words, those differences of chemical and physical characteristics are mainly owing to a lot of factors, including the difference of the climate, the current situation of waste management, people’s productive and consumptive activities, the economic development level and people’s habits and customs (Wei et al., 2009) and so on.
Management of domestic waste Collection and transfer. Waste collection strategies represent a major issue in an environmentally efficient system, since they can significantly affect the recycling targets (Chowdhury, 2009; De Jaeger and Rogge, 2013; Passarini et al., 2011). It is notable that there is an abundance of recyclable domestic waste in the RASC, such as beer bottles, soft drink bottles, cardboard and so forth, especially in the Tibetan Plateau and the Qinba Mountain. Although most of the resident could not identify the recyclable waste, 90.05% of interviewees were willing to sort waste, which can be sold to the recyclers. If the recyclable waste could be sold for ¥2.00 per kilogram, 88.24% of interviewees were willing to send the recyclable waste to the fixed recycling station. It is indicated that the economic driving force of classified collection are very strong for peasants in the RASC. According to a previous report, it is mainly owing to the
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Waste Management & Research 33(1)
redemption value of the recyclables (Chung and Poon, 2001; Miafodzyeva et al., 2013). If the rural dwellers practice more responsible waste management, they can expect to ‘save’ an economic loss of about $22 per rural household per year (Padma et al., 2007). Therefore, waste sorting has easily been taken on board by most rural communities without too much need for raising awareness. Practically, not only did peasants drive to sort recyclable waste, but also many recyclers drove regularly to the villages where they could easily collect the high value items of recyclable waste. However, the phenomenon was uncommon in most remote areas of RASC. The reason is that it is uneconomic to collect the recyclable waste in the remote areas, therefore, many recyclers or recycling companies need to be subsidised or offered tax privileges by government when they are able to be engaged on a trial basis to collect the recyclable waste. Referring to the collection of domestic waste, the investigated results indicated that a majority of interviewees (95.02%) were willing to dump their domestic waste into collection facilities. However, the infrastructures were still weak in most of villages, which had restrained the waste from recycling. Thus, it is very important that the government should enhance the constructions and investments of infrastructures and the inter-municipal cooperation in the RASC. Resident’s acceptable distance to dump domestic waste must be considered when building the collection facilities, because the relationship between the percentage of people who would like to dump and the dumping distance shows a linear negative correlation (y = –10.45x + 50.09, R² = 0.907). The distance of 50–800 m is a proper alternative within which 91.86% of interviewees were willing to dump their domestic waste into the collection facilities. More importantly for policy-makers, the concern should not be only on whether the public knows how to separate the waste, but also on the methods of how to motivate them to separate waste for the good effect of society and how to maintain an effective market for recyclables. Treatment and disposal. Based on the questionnaires, about 62.90% of interviewees would collectively treat domestic waste by village committee rather than by themselves. This means that in the rural areas, the support and the popularity of the centralised treatment of domestic waste are even more prominent than the decentralised treatment. Practically, in some developed countries, such as in the rural area of England, marketing activities of centralised treatment of waste have been extremely successful (Ackroyd et al., 2008). However, in most of developing countries, the treatment of domestic waste is still primitive. Being similar to Fiji in the southwest Pacific Ocean (Padma et al., 2007) and India (Gowda et al., 1995), burning, burying and throwing of wastes are the most common waste ‘disposal’ method in the RASC. Currently, only 24.43% of investigated households discharged unsorted domestic waste to the simple landfill. Except in the Sichuan Basin, the sanitary landfill is hardly available in the RASC because it is uneconomic. But in some special villages, the
sanitary landfill is needed if these villages are under the following conditions: (i) the population is enough to achieve good economic returns; (ii) the surroundings are very sensitive and fragile; (iii) the villages are located in the centre of many intensive villages. In addition, if a village is close to a town centre or city where the landfill can be available, a transfer station should be built in there to transfer domestic waste to the neighbouring landfill. It is worthwhile to note that composting has been practiced for a long time, although it is considered as an extra daily chore. If a large amount of organic waste could be collected from the villages to compost or to ferment, the organic fertiliser made from those processes would have a wide market perspective in the RASC, because 77.83% of interviewees could accept the matures and 69.68% of interviewees were willing to pay between ¥0.6 and ¥1.0 per kilogram. In the RASC, most of inert waste, such as ash and dirt, are commonly returned into farmland, and some of them, such as bricks and ceramic tiles, can be filled in a special site or be used as paving materials. The biogas plant (Song et al., 2014), the bioreactor landfill (Li et al., 2011) and the semi-aerobic landfill (Yang and Zha, 2008) also have been approved to be effective techniques to treat domestic waste in the rural area. Although the temperature is very low in the Tibetan Plateau in winter owing to the high altitude, the plateau region is a rich solar energy resource that can be used to preserve heat (Feng et al., 2008). However, the incineration is not considered as a suitable way to treat domestic waste in the RASC, though the lower calorific value of domestic waste can completely meet the requirement of incineration. The reasons are: (i) the incineration plant is too expensive to be built and operated; (ii) excellent technologists and supervisors are so scarce; (iii) the flue gas of incinerators is extremely dangerous and it is difficult to control. Management. In rural areas, residents primarily perceive the pollution of domestic waste from their senses, hence it is often the visual impact of waste around households that will be seen as the main reason for domestic solid waste management practices. Therefore, 85.07% of interviewees thought that the domestic waste needed to be treated. Moreover, they expected that the service occurred regularly and that domestic waste was managed appropriately. Actually, rural waste management options are limited in the RASC because of the small population size, the geographical distribution of households or villages, and limited resources. For villages and settlements near urban areas, the most logical approach could be to link up with existing waste removal and disposal system operating in nearby urban areas. One of the successful examples is the waste management in Sichuan Basin.
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Interviewees's proportion(%)
Han et al.
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(iii) a localised mini landfill for a cluster of villages and or settlements.
People's acceptable working hour (hour) 4 6 8 10
2
y = -13.66x + 81.22 R² = 0.995
Working hours per day
40 20
Income per month
y = 40.17ln(x) + 5.881 R² = 0.977
0 500
800 1200 1500 people's expectant income (᪳)
≥1500
Figure 4. Relationship of resident’s willingness, working hours and expectant income to participate in waste management.
But for the remote rural areas, a regular commercial collection of domestic waste could not be financially feasible, hence, at present, the disposal of domestic waste only depends on a localised mini landfill for a cluster of villages or settlements, which is supported by the local and state governments. In rural areas where there are no municipalities, waste collection and disposal services are unavailable and residents do not need to pay for the services. So the residents can only resolve the problems by burying, simple burning, discharging onto river banks and disposing illegally in nearby landfills. Luckily, 69.68% of households were willing to pay a lower of ¥5.00 per month for collection and removal services of domestic waste, but about one-third of interviewees were not willing to pay anything. Therefore, the domestic waste disposal fee of per rural household could be accepted at around ¥5.00 per month and a demonstration or a mandatory village/settlement-based waste collection and disposal system should be developed. Solid waste management is a complex task. Hence, for such a system running effectively, villages and settlements can collectively negotiate a regular arrangement of waste management and each village needs to define a central location where the waste bins are kept together with a regular local collection arrangement. Since 66.52% of interviewees, mainly composed of the middle-aged people, were willing to participate in the waste clean and management, operationally the domestic waste management will be relatively easy in the RASC. In there, the local village committee can be used to establish and operate the waste collection system. Based on the relationship of resident’s willingness, working hours and expectant income for participating in waste management in the RASC (Figure 4), it is suggested that the work time of participation in waste management should be 5 h per day with the income of ¥1000 per month. In conclusion, based on the study by Padma et al. (2007) and the current situation of the RASC, options for rural domestic waste management are: (i) a partially subsidised rural–urban tandem residual waste collection and disposal system; (ii) a localised transfer station linked to an urban waste landfill site;
Regardless of which system is selected, in the design of the system it is important to ensure financial viability and practical considerations of: (i) collection and transfer of residual wastes and recyclable material to waste bins under the rural–urban tandem system, transfer stations or mini landfill sites; (ii) local village or settlement-based fee collection and/or payment system (around ¥5.00 per month would be accepted); (iii) local village or settlement-based monitoring and enforcement of waste separation, recycling, disposal and collection systems (which are established mainly depending on the local government and the environmental education). A propositional waste management system in the RASC is shown in Figure 5.
Conclusions The RASC is experiencing waste management problems similar to other villages in developing countries. The water pollution and the solid waste pollution relating to the domestic waste are very common. The results indicated that there were some distinctive features of domestic waste in the RASC, such as low generation, good compressibility and high lower-calorific value compared with other rural areas. Although there are no significant differences among influence factors, the topography and the distance from towns or cities of the investigated villages, the villagers’ ethnicities and income sources have some influences on the characteristics of domestic waste to a certain extent. Based on the above discussion, the classified collection plays an important role in the management of domestic waste, hence sorting organics, recyclables and inert waste should be promoted widely on the household and village basis. Then the collection and transfer of recyclable matters are mainly depended on the recyclers or material recycling companies, which should be subsidised or offered tax privileges by the local and state governments. The residues can be collected for centralised treatment by village committees or for decentralised treatment by households, but it is better to treat domestic waste by the centralised way in the villages where the population is large or the distances from other neighbour villages or cities are close. The distance between each collection facility is considered properly as between 50 m and 800 m. The work time of participation in waste management is suggested as 5 h per day with the income of ¥1000 per month. Referring to treatment and disposal, mixed domestic waste is suitable to be treated and disposed of with landfills or existing landfills; organic waste can be composted or fermented to produce energy and fertiliser; inert waste can be returned into farmland or be filled. Moreover, the bioreactor landfill has been
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Waste Management & Research 33(1) Household
Household
Suburbs
Transferring
Mini Landfill & Bioreactor landfill
Organics
Others
Composting & biogas tank
Back to farmland
Collecting
Recycling companies
Organics
Village committee
Recyclables
Composting& biogas plants
Others
Organics
Village committee
Private recyclers
Sorting
Others
Collecting
Recyclables
Back to farmland
Recyclables
Others
Composting & biogas tank
Organics
Sorting
Recyclables
Remote areas
Composting& biogas plants
Transferring
Transfer station
Neighboring Villages
Subsidizing
Resources utilizing
State & local Government
Transferring
Neighboring Villages
Town & county Subsidizing
Neighboring landfill or other facilities
Figure 5. Propositional waste management system in the RASC.
approved as an effective technique, but incineration is not considered as a suitable way to treat domestic waste in the RASC. Moreover, the efficiency and effect of the proposed waste management system, which was combined with the classified collection, centralised and decentralised treatment, still needs to be proved by practice.
Acknowledgements We all would like to acknowledge the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Research Institutes of China and the Cultivating Program of Middle-Aged Key Teachers of Chengdu University of Technology and thank Doctor Jiannan Cheng for his support on language correction.
Declaration of conflicting interests The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding This study received funding from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Research Institutes of China [No. 2012ZL004] and the Cultivating Program of Middle-Aged Key Teachers of Chengdu University of Technology [No. KYGG201406].
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WMR0010.1177/0734242X15569414Waste Management & Research
Corrigendum Waste Management & Research 2015, Vol. 33(3) 300 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0734242X15569414 wmr.sagepub.com
Corrigendum
Characteristics and management of domestic waste in the rural area of Southwest China by Zhiyong Han et al., Waste Manag Res January 2015 33: 39–47, doi:10.1177/0734242X14558668. In the above paper Figure 4 was printed incorrectly. The correct version is published below. The authors apologize for this error.
People's acceptable working hour (hour)
Interviewees's proportion(%)
569414
other2015
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2
4
6
8
10
y = -13.66x + 81.22 R² = 0.995
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Income per month
40 20
Working hours per day
y = 40.17ln(x) + 5.881 R² = 0.977
0 500
800
1200
1500
≥1500
people's expectant income (᪳)
Figure 4. Relationship of people’s willingness, working hours and expectant income to participate in waste management.
