Environmental Responsibility Defination And Management Mechanisms Of Waste

Today, the waste issue has been a global tickler that badgers the human's survival and development. Large scale production, over consumption and large scale abandonment have achieved economic growth, but also result in huge amount of waste, new environmental problems, a serious lack of waste disposal areas, lower recycling rate of waste, and so on. All these environmental issues caused by waste have been seriously influencing and restricting the sustainable development of the world economy and the mankind.For a long time, in addressing the waste problem, there is a misconception that environmental protection is an especial activity divorced from economic activities, and emphasizes on government action unilaterally, while ignoring the basic law of economic activity. In fact, the waste environmental problems are caused not only by the failure of economic operating mechanism in specific areas, but also by the failure of non-economic system (or the social-political powers) in correcting the economic mechanisms. Therefore, to solve waste problems, we should consider environment as a resource of economic system, distribute and utility it in a way of low cost and high efficiency to achieve correction of the failure of economic mechanism.Under the modern economics framework, this dissertation comprehensively utilizes the research methods of economics, management and logistics engineering to study the following issues and their general laws, including economic roots of waste generation, environmental externality characteristics, environmental market mechanisms, the extended producer responsibility on controlling waste, the formation of waste disposal market and the implementation mechanism of "zero emissions". The major purpose of this research is to analyze the actuality of waste disposal in China and find ways to reach the dual goal of waste disposal and economic development. The detailed studies and main views of this dissertation are listed as follows:Firstly, the generation of waste caused serious environmental problems. Multilateral of environmental externalities doesn't lead to spontanenous form waste disposal market, which needs to enforce contracts. Practice has proved that waste problem willn't be resolved ultimately by command-and-control end-of-pipe approaches.Secondly, to waste disposal, the market-oriented source prevention is superior to command-and-control end-of-pipe approaches, which environmental market mechanisms can realize environmental costs internalized completely. The key to the environmental externalities lies in the clear definition of property rights, and making market mechanism play a fundamental role in environmental protection. The perfect laws, regulations and various matched measures can ensure market mechanism to run effectively. The extended producer responsibility is an effective policy of the market-oriented source prevention.Thirdly, there are two main means of correcting environmental externalities and the failure of public goods:to impose Pigou Tax and to grant exchangeable Emission Permits. They are essentially the same. Under the condition of the adjustment of market mechanism to sewage drainage and the government's prohibition of illegal emissions, the two means can achieve the goal of environmental protection and promote the formation of waste disposal market.Fourthly, under the condition of the stringent obedience of the environmental laws, the producer is stimulated to choose the optimal waste disposal approaches. The producers may have the motive for disposing wastes all by themselves or outsourcing wastes to the third party rather than paying taxes if the tax rate of discharging pollutants is enough high; while they will appeal to the third party to dispose wastes if the wastes disposal technology has obvious scale economy and special economy. Market may induce the optimal waste disposal approaches.Fifthly, to realize the goals of the resource reduction and "zero discharged" is a very complicated systematic project, which requires cooperation of government, markets, enterprises and individuals. In an integrated approach, the market mechanism is the soul, and the government's definition and controls of environmental responsibility is the key. Under the condition that the environmental responsibility and the extended producer responsibility are defined and implemented entirely, the market of waste disposal and environmental protection will be spontaneously generated and then begins interaction with industry agglomeration. All of them will drive the enterprise to optimize business processes and the entire closed-loop supply chain processes and eliminate all wastes from the root. Sixthly, learned from the waste disposal experience of the developed countries, China's waste disposal practice in the last 30 years, such as payment for discharging pollutants and emissions trading, failed to strike the right note, of which the main reason is the absence of perfect laws and regulations system to regulate the responsibility and the behavior of economic principal parts, including producers, consumers and government. The key to resolve the waste disposal question of our country lies in establishing and improving a regulation system of waste disposal and the extended producer responsibility and implementing them strictly.