Research On Chinese Urban Citizen Household Waste Recycling Mechanism

Garbage has been an unavoidable problem for human development. Since industrialization, urban economy flourishes, while urban population has increased dramatically, causing a large number of municipal solid wastes (MSW). Yet the improper disposal of it has become the obstacle to the development of urban growth. Since the reform and opening up, China’s urbanization speeds up, with cities expanding continuously. Incineration and landfill are the mainly means to dispose municipal solid waste. In recent years, the cumulative effect of traditional disposal of municipal solid waste and the growing amount of it have brought about a shortage of land and deterioration of the surrounding environment, resulting in bottlenecks of urban. In addition, as the amount of municipal solid waste grows, a lot of recyclable materials, which are in fact misplaced resources, are burned or landfill. Urban household waste is the main part of the MSW accounting for60%-70%. So, this paper is studying the recycling mechanism of urban residents’household garbage. This is significant for it not only maximizes the recycling of recyclable household wastes, but also reduces the amount of MSW of urban.This study firstly gives definitions of the municipal solid wastes, the recycling of it and the recycling mechanisms, then sort out China’s current MSW collection mechanism, including resource recycling systems and waste disposal system. There are lots of problems in the current recycling mechanisms including the lack of second-hand goods market, the leakage of substances, the disorder of actors’management, the poor performance of garbage classification, and the heavy burden of garbage disposal system. It is thought that the problems lie in that the resource recycling system centers only on self-interest while garbage disposal system on public welfare.The paper then describes the solutions to the problems of MSW abroad with the findings that Japan and Vienna are government-dominated, while the United States and Hong Kong are market-dominated. Moreover, their running mechanisms are also analyzed. Since system target determines its behavior, Chinese MSW collection mechanism must integrate resource recycling system with waste disposal system organically, in order to maximize the recycling of household waste. The nature of recycling system’s complete self-interest and disposal system’s total public welfare gives rise to the contradiction of above two systems’goals. Government involvement is needed to solve the problem of substance leakage, while economic incentives are required in disposal system, so as to bring the best out of every participant. In all, Chinese urban household garbage recycling mechanism must run under the mode of government and market combined together.Under the guidance of the operating modes of MSW collection mechanism, the framework is designed, including recycling objects, recycling processes, recycling subjects, power of recycling mechanism. Reclassify urban household wastes according to its value of usage, that is to say the old material and etc that can be used directly is sorted as waste Ⅰ; things that are renewable as waste Ⅱ; kitchen waste, combustible material and finable material that is with comprehensive utilization as waste Ⅲ; Batteries and other hazardous substances as waste IV. The recycling processes of these four categories of waste are:residents---the second-hand goods market---residents, residents---collection---resource recycling businesses, residents---recycling concentration-comprehensive utilization, residents-centralized collection special treatment. After analyzing the characteristics of various wastes and their respective intermediate market, we come to believe that community store is the best first class recycling subject. Meanwhile along with city Recycle Bin, they are the junction of recycling system and garbage disposal system. Interests power the whole recycling mechanism, under which residents gain the market value of second-hand goods and benefit from the free charge of the disposal of waste Ⅲ; community stores extend their business coverage, identify with some consumers and obtain some government subsidy; city recycle bins make profit out of renting warehouse and trans-shipping waste; government eliminates wastes, relieves environmental protection burden and gains the market value of classifying wastes Ⅲ, boosting social effect.Last but no the least, this study investigates the readiness of Nanchang citizen to classify and recycle garbage, establish second-hand goods exchange platform, exchange daily necessities with community store, so as to argue the possibility of recycling mechanism from the empirical perspective.