ESTIMATING INFORMAL MUNICIPAL WASTE RECYCLING ACTIVITIES IN URBAN CHINA

摘要

Waste management is gathering the growing attention of Chinese policy-makers as economic expansion and urbanisation leads to ever increasing amounts of waste. The informal sector is extremely active in the collection, processing (mainly sorting and cleaning) and trading of recyclables in urban China, providing secondary raw materials for the burgeoning demands of industry. Source separation at household level is still in its infancy; only several pilot projects have been implemented. Official, high quality data on municipal solid waste (MSW) generation barely exists in Chinese practice; data used in literature is cited from Chinese Statistical Offices, but it appears inconsistent and includes information rather obtained at transfer stations and treatment facilities such as landfills or MSW incineration plant than representing “real” waste generation at the source. In literature a discrepance between real waste generation at the source and waste collected and transported occurs; this difference can be considered as upper limit of informally collected MSW. This paper uses key performance indicators on informal waste recycling sector to estimate the potential of recyclables that might be informally diverted. The results show that approx. 2.5 to 5 million informal collectors with daily collection amounts ranging from 50 to 110 kg collect may collect from 32.5 million tonnes (54 kg/cap/y or 17 w/w% of the total calculated, generated MSW) up to 171.6 million tonnes (283 kg/cap/y or 53 w/w% of the total calculated, generated MSW). More reasonable seems an upper limit of 34 w/w%, as this fits to the average value of the difference in the quantities “generated” and “collected and transported” in 2006. This leads to a calculated MSW generation of 383 kg/cap/yr, which is close to the estimated urban MSW generation set out in literature of approx. 365 kg/cap/yr for urban China.