How to integrate the informal recycling system into municipal solid waste management in developing countries: Based on a China’s case in Suzhou urban area

Resources, Conservation and Recycling 110 (2016) 74–86

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How to integrate the informal recycling system into municipal solid waste management in developing countries: Based on a China’s case in Suzhou urban area Fan Fei a , Lili Qu a , Zongguo Wen a,∗ , Yanyan Xue b , Huanan Zhang a a

State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 10084, China Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development (CSTM), School of Management and Governance, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 10 November 2015 Received in revised form 14 March 2016 Accepted 18 March 2016 Keywords: Domestic recyclable resources Informal recycling system Flow estimation Policy suggestion

a b s t r a c t China and lots of other developing countries have been facing an increase in population and immense economic development that lead to an enormous growth in solid waste generation, and many developing countries aspire to achieve modern waste management systems. Domestic recyclable resources (DRR) are the recyclable part of the household waste, and are recycled mainly by informal systems in many developing countries. The recycling system in China is a typical example which exist in formal and informal recycling systems simultaneously. Based on filed research, questionnaire survey and interview, this paper carefully studies the recycling paths, material flows and cash flows in the informal recycling system in Suzhou urban area, and aims to give targeted policy suggestions in the framework of Pressure–State–Response (PSR) model. Based on the result, the recycling rate in Suzhou urban area was about 22% in 2013. It is suggested for the government to integrate the informal recycling system into municipal solid waste management by (1) giving professional training of the recycling practitioners and improving their recycling facilities, (2) giving the formal recycling channels a price advantage, (3) setting up information platforms, and (4) optimizing the layouts of recycling systems. These quantitate results and policy suggestions could be helpful to integrate the informal recycling system into municipal solid waste management of the formal recycling systems. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Over the past decades, many developing countries including China have been facing a population growth and immense economic development. This development is also linked to an enormous development in solid waste generation. Urbanization and population growth accompanied by increasing gross domestic product (GDP) and higher standard of living are the key reasons behind the magnitude of the growth in total waste generation (Linzner and Salhofer, 2014; Batool et al., 2008). Therefore, many developing countries aspire modern waste management systems, which are associated with relatively high recycling rates of clean, source separated materials (Wilson et al., 2009). However, although the formal waste management organizations have established pilot

∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (F. Fei), ull [email protected] (L. Qu), [email protected] (Z. Wen), [email protected] (Y. Xue), [email protected] (H. Zhang). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2016.03.019 0921-3449/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

schemes for source separation of recyclables, this strategy is still in its infancy, while the informal sectors are active in the collection, processing and trading of recyclable resources in urban china. Domestic recyclable resources (DRR) are the recyclable part of the household waste. From the perspective of life cycle management, the recycling of DRR is not only an important part of reducing the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) produced, but also an important part of resource conservation. Therefore, the recycling of DRR is valued highly by many countries (Wilson et al., 2001). The recycling of DRR in most developed countries is part of the MSW management that is directly managed by government departments, especially some developed countries have complete Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system in the consideration of the environmental protection (Kollikkathara et al., 2009). In this kind of system, the recycling regulations have clear rules about the responsibility to the recycle and treatment of the waste, and sometimes producers and residents need to pay for the recycle and disposal of the waste. The recycling is always operated by standardized, specialized enterprises; thus, in most developed countries, the

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recycling systems could be considered as formal systems. (Wilson et al., 2009). However, for many developing countries that have relatively low economic and regulation level, such as China, the treatment of MSW is not well developed, so the DRR are more important as a source of resources. Due to the fact that DRR have an economic value and a number of people in developing countries have a relatively low income level, those low-waged workers can obtain benefits through the buying and reselling of DRR, which would put the recycling of DRR in a preliminary stage that the recycling behavior is spontaneous and disorder. The only aim is to obtain economic benefits. Also, in China, there are no clear rules and restrictions on recycling subjects, and the EPR system has not been established yet. For example, the incomes of the waste treatment plants were obtained according to the treatment amount. However, the separation of DRR before the treatment plants would lead to the reduction of the total treatment amount causing a reduction in their incomes. Hence, the sanitation departments are not enthused by the promotion of the DRR separation. Moreover, the government has established some pilot standard routs to recycle. Due to the high cost of pollutant control and treatment such as the collection and treatment of acid wastewater and waste residue, formal systems usually have very low recycling amounts, causing the recycling system to be operated by the informal system through the decentralized buying and selling of waste materials (Ezeah et al., 2013; Scheinberg et al., 2011). The aforementioned reasons give rise to the two systems to exist simultaneously. Nevertheless, the recycling work is still not well performed. On the one hand, the recycling rates of the DRR that have comparatively high economic value like plastics were very high, but the pollution was also very severe. On the other hand, the recycling rates of the cheap DRR like glass were very low, and the hazardous waste like waste battery and tube were not well recycled. The recycling system in China is a typical example of the informal recycling systems in developing countries (Linzner and Salhofer, 2014). Some investigates forced on the recycling system have mentioned the existence and problems of the informal recycling system. The informal recycling system is characterized by small-scale, low-technology, low-paid, unrecorded and unregulated work, often completed by individuals or family groups and operated with low capital investment. They provide primary collection and processing of collected materials into intermediate or final products (Wilson et al., 2006), and are driven solely by the revenues derived from selling recovered materials. Informal waste recycling had some positive aspects. It could help improve the recycling rates and promote the source separation (Wilson et al., 2009), and it also continues to provide the major source of livelihood for a significant proportion of the urban poor (Sasaki et al., 2014). However, there exist serious social and health problems. Informal recycling has traditionally been practiced by outcasts and marginal groups in developing countries. Isolation as a part of social exclusion leads societies of scavengers to develop their own habits and values, and they are often a subject of harassment by the authorities and police (Wilson et al., 2006). Also, there exist many non-standard recycling and processing activities in the informal system which are likely to cause a serious waste of resources and the secondary pollution of the environment (Troschinetz and Mihelcic, 2009). Health and safety risks associated with informal recycling include occupational health risks posed to scavenger/waste pickers (like injuries and contagions) and community health risks posed to the related community or general public (Gutberlet and Baeder, 2008; Haefliger et al., 2009; Sasaki et al., 2014). Therefore, many developing countries including China started to build a formal recycling system. However, these policies could not fulfill their purposes. First, because of the high environmental protection, tax and other cost, the informal system was more competitive than the formal system (Hu and Wen, 2015). Also, in many countries, public poli-

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cies towards the informal recycling system are largely negative and repression, like forbidding their business activities instead of integrating them into the formal recycling system. (Wilson et al., 2006). After all, on one hand, the government needs to establish a formal system; on the other hand, the government could not ban the informal system in a short time. Therefore, some researchers thought it was a good option to gradually bring the participators of the informal system into the formal system by standardizing their operations, and there is clear potential for “win-win” co-operation between the formal and informal sectors, as providing support to the informal sector, to build recycling rates and to address some of the social issues which could reduce the overall costs of waste management for the formal sector (Wilson et al., 2009; Velis et al., 2012; Masood, 2013; Matter et al., 2013). Besides, it was reported in (Zhang and Wen, 2014a,b) that there was a formal PET bottle recycling company in Beijing which had hired informal recycling participators (mainly scavengers and informal recycling sites’ owners), but this practice haven’t been promoted at present, and the government did not have corresponding policies. Most researches use qualitative analysis based on social survey to study the transformation way from informal system to formal system. Some researches carried out interviews with the government officers to obtain their attitude towards informal sectors and provide suggestions to integrate them (Sembiring and Nitivattananon, 2010). However, the quantitative investigation of the recycling amounts, recycling routes and their influencing factors of the informal system, is an important support to the direct analysis and policy suggestions. Nonetheless, most of the previous research mainly used qualitative methods, and only focused on some specific stakeholders or steps. Thus making it hard for the government to promulgate targeted policies and measures to promote the standardization of the informal system, especially when needing to formulate specific provisions. For example, there are some researches which focus on some specific informal recycling sectors such as the end-of-life vehicle (Hu and Wen, 2015) and the electronic waste (Chi et al., 2011; Streicher-Porte et al., 2005), or some specific kinds of informal recycling practitioners such as scavengers (Asim et al., 2012), dumpsite waste pickers (Sasaki et al., 2014) and itinerant waste buyers (Sasaki and Araki, 2013), but these conclusions could not be promoted to the whole system. Next, there are some researchers who have estimated the recycling rates achieved by informal system in China based on literatures and estimation, for example 17–38% by Linzner and Salhofer (2014) and 20–50% by Wilson et al. (2009). However, because of the large study area, the diffuse data sources and the different system boundaries, the result is not specific enough and the uncertainty is large. Besides, some of these researches always just provided terminal results of the informal recycling systems, and could not identify the problems in the waste flows. Thus, these results still couldn’t provide a solid foundation for the policy making. Also, there are researches that studied the framework of integration of informal waste management sector with the formal sector, but these papers usually focused on the qualitative principals and framework, and could not give us the qualitative proofs (Wang et al., 1997; Masood, 2013; Paul et al., 2012; Velis et al., 2012; Wilson et al., 2012; Davis et al., 2006; Tsai, 2008). In order to solve the above problems, based on filed research, questionnaire survey and interview of every level of the informal recycling network participators in Suzhou urban area, this paper carefully studies the recycling paths, material flows and cash flows of four main kinds of DRR in the informal recycling system, and aims to give targeted policy suggestions in the framework of Pressure–State–Response (PSR) model, in order to establish a more formal recycling system on the base of the informal system and

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make the recycling of DRR more environmentally friendly and more efficient. 2. DRR recycling in China and the Suzhou city 2.1. The definition of DRR in China The recycling system in China are kind of different from the other countries such as the USA and Japan. In China, the household garbage mainly consist of paper, metal, plastics, fabrics, glass, kitchen waste and other materials. The DRR are the recycled part of the valuable materials in the household garbage, which mainly include paper, metal, plastics and fabrics. These parts were first collected by the residents and sold to the recycling sites and scavengers. Also, some DRR were not separated and was thrown into the trash can with other household garbage, but usually the scavengers would pick them out and sell them to the recycling sites. The DRR which was not picked up would be collected with the rest of the household garbage by the sanitation department. This paper mainly focuses on the DRR which was recycled by the recycling system (Fig. 1). Although glass is a kind of DRR theoretically, it will not be considered in this research paper due to its relatively low recycling value which shows no interest of many in the recycling of the glass. 2.2. The development history of China’s recycling systems The reason for the existence of the informal recycling system and formal recycling system in China is the development history of the recycling industry, while the prosperity and declination of the informal and formal recycling system are all closely related to the policy of the different stages of development. Since 1950 until today, the recycling industry in China has been facing a process form flourishing to decline and then came to prosperity again. In early 1950s, the Chinese government raised the significance of recyclable resources for economic and social development, and set up recycling plants in major cities. After several years of development, in 1977, the nation reached the zenith of the waste material recycling. However, in mid and late 1980s, the government cancelled the plan management of recyclable resources. The stateowned recycling enterprises gradually atrophied, the recycling network and recycling amount were sharply reduced. At the same time, the number of the individual traders had a rapid increase. However, most of these companies were small and scattered with lower technology level and little environmental input, and caused social concern due to pollution problems. At the beginning of the 21st century, the government began to promote recyclable resources recycling system construction, and guided local recycling network establishments. So far, the system establishment in all regions is still in progress, and the front-end part still consists of informal systems. In order to improve the efficiency of recycling through the standardization of recycling processes, the Chinese government have been launching dozens of policies such as “Measures for the administration of recyclable resources recycling” (MOC, 2007), and “Suggestions on establishing the complete and advanced recycling systems of discarded goods” (MOC, 2006). These policies are all intended to promote recycling of DRR and management of the flow of DRR through the construction of formal recycling systems. However, in recent years, the recycling amount and rates did not increase (Fig. S1). It also suggests that the performance of the existing policy is not good enough. Therefore, it is important to explore the main reasons for this phenomenon and find better policies and measures to plan and optimize the development of formal and informal systems as a whole and jointly improve the recycling level.

2.3. Brief introduction of Suzhou and its recycling system The recycling system in Suzhou is a typical one in China, where the informal system is given priority while the formal one has just started to construct. Suzhou is located in the south part of Jiangsu province, near Shanghai, and is one of the most developed region in China (Fig.2). In 2013, the GDP of Suzhou was 1,301.6 billion RMB (197.58 billion USD), causing Suzhou to take the sixth place in China. The urban area is the core region in Suzhou, with a total population of 957.4 thousands (BSS, 2014). Suzhou urban area mainly consists of residential, institutional, commercial and touristic areas. It does not contain an industrial zone. In June 2009, Suzhou was chosen to be one of the 29 resource recycle pilot cities (bunch 2) of Ministry of Commerce; the field survey of this paper was carried out at the pilot area. The MSW clean-up amount in Suzhou urban area was 254.93 thousand tons in 2013, took 9.14% of the total amount of Suzhou city (BSS, 2014). In order to solve the sharp increase of the MSW, Suzhou’s environmental sanitation bureau have set forth the practice of divergence and classification of the MSW. First, the MSW could be divided into domestic, restaurant, construction, landscape greening and organic market waste. These kinds of wastes were treated separately. Domestic waste was further divided into three kinds: hazardous, recyclable (DRR) and other waste (Fig. S2). In order to promote the classification of the domestic waste, the sanitation bureau have set classification waste bins in about 200 communities until the end of 2013. At the same time, the formal recycling system was under construction under the leadership of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative. The formal system is designed to have three levels: recycling sites, processing center, and distribution trade center. U until the end of 2014, Suzhou have established 49 recycling sites and 4 processing centers, while the distribution and trade center were still under construction and attracted investment. However, as the informal system has been working for a long time, the construction of the formal system has met lots of problems. First, the sanitation bureau could not collect enough DRR from the classification waste bins, because the scavengers had already picked the DRR before them. Also, most of the formal recycling sites were transformed from the informal sites while the government was absent; thus, the operation of the formal sites was still almost the same as the informal ones. 3. Methodology 3.1. The definition of informal recycling system In the case study, formal and informal recycling systems exist simultaneously; however, the informal system has an advantage over the formal one in both facilities and recycling amount even though the recycling path of the formal system is similar to that of the informal one. As showed in Fig. S3, the mixed system has the following kinds of participators. 3.1.1. Scavengers Scavengers are engaged in the forefront of the collecting and selling of DRR. They bought DRR from the residents, and also picked up the valuable things from the trash cans. Meanwhile, some scavengers’ work was done by the dustmen and cleaners, they could get a lot of DRR in their cleaning work in the communities, markets, enterprises and institutions. The scavengers usually sell the DRR to the recycling sites (both formal and informal) which offered higher prices in their neighborhoods. There are thousands of scavengers in Suzhou urban area engaged in this work spontaneously, and they are responsible for their own profits and losses. Since, they do not

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Fig. 1. The recycling system boundary of DRR in China.

accept the government’s management, they belong to the informal system in this paper. 3.1.2. Recycling sites This is the most important participator. Almost all of the DRR selling – and – buying go through the recycling sites. The recycling sites buys the DRR from scavengers and residents, and sell them to the processing centers and re-use factories after some primary processing work like sorting of the plastics, disassemble of the waste machines, packaging and compress of the waste paper. Recycling sites usually have settled recycling places, storage yards and transporting vehicles. There were about 200–300 recycling sites in Suzhou urban area, and 49 of them were established or remolded by the government. Since they follow the management of the government, they belong to the formal system in this paper. However, the function of the formal sites is similar to the informal sites. They were all responsible for their own profits and losses. The government did not have any supervision for both the formal and informal sites at that time. 3.1.3. Processing centers They are mainly engaged in the sorting and initial processing of the DRR, such as the packaging of the waste paper, classification of the waste plastics and the cutting of the waste metal. After the processing, the DRR would be sold to the reuse factories. Some DRR that do not need the initial processing would be straightly sold

to the reuse factories from the recycling sites. There were nearly one thousand processing centers in Suzhou, but most of them were doing the initial processing of industrial recycling resources. Based on the estimation of this study, there were about 20–30 processing centers that are mainly doing the initial processing of the domestic recycling resources, while 4 of them were formal which were established or remolded by the government, and also follow the management of the government. Same as the recycling sites, the function of the formal processing centers did not have an essential distinction with the informal centers.

3.1.4. Reuse factories The reuse factories produce products using the DRR. Most reuse factories in Suzhou were normal production enterprises such as paper and steel mills, while DRR were only a part of their raw materials. The formal reuse factories were the factories that were in conformity with the relevant provisions of the country and had the qualifications of the recycling and reuse. In Suzhou, the reuse of most papers, metals and fabrics wastes were operated by the formal reuse factories, while the reuse of most waste plastic was operated by the informal factories. This was due to the facile reuse of waste plastic which only need melt granulation and injection molding. Conversely, this leads to serious pollution hazards. Since the informal factories do not need to pay for the environmental costs, it made them have an economic advantage.

Fig. 2. The location of Suzhou urban area.

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Fig. 3. The methods used in this paper.

3.2.1. Questionnaire survey According to estimates of the Suzhou Recyclable Resources Industry Association, there are around 250 recycling sites in the case area. First we used stratified sampling to determine the sample sizes of the three districts according to the proportion of the total number. Meanwhile, because the total amount of the recycling sites was hard to get, which means the sampling frame was unknown, so we used the haphazard sampling method to get the samples. The researchers investigated 49 recycling sites in total. To ensure the accuracy of the study, the number of samples taken across the three districts were distributed according to population, and

sample number

In order to obtain the main results such as the flow amounts and directions of DRR, influencing factors, recycling rates and so on, this study is mainly based on questionnaire surveys and face to face interviews, and has also synthetically used literature review, sampling analysis and other methods (Fig.3). In accordance with the purpose of this study, the researchers interviewed every kind of participants in the system, including government officers, social organizations, residents, scavengers, recycling sites owners and the employees of the processing centers and reuse factories. In order to get quantitative information, the researchers conducted a questionnaire survey on the recycling sites. The questionnaire survey were carried out between April and May 2013, and a similar interview had also been conducted in 2008 by our research team (Mo et al., 2009). The interviews were carried out three times from 2013 to 2015, in order to get not only the recycling situation in Suzhou, but also its development situation trends. Besides, we interviewed 505 residents about their DRR collecting and selling activities and attitude (Zhang and Wen, 2014a,b). The results of the interviews and the questionnaire survey were compared to each other to obtain more reasonable conclusions.

30%

100

25%

80

20% 60 15% 40

sampling proportion

3.2. Methodology of the case study

10% 20

5%

0

0% Canglang District Sample number

Pinjiang District

Jinchang District

Total number (approximate)

Sampling proportion

Fig. 4. The number of recycling sites sampled in every district and their proportion.

the sampling rates were around 20%, which is in accordance with the social investigation requirements (Tirado-Soto and Zamberlan, 2013) (Fig. 4). We mainly used survey for the research of the recycling sites to get the quantitate information, and used interview for all of the participators include the government officers and the staffs in the industry association. Besides, the sampling has limitations. As we estimated, over 80% of the recycling sites are informal, but because some informal recycling sites did not willing to accept the interview and survey, there were only 20% of the samples were informal recycling sites. But after communication with the industrial association and other experts, the results about the DRR material and cash flow were reliable on general range because the formal sites and informal sites do not have significant differences in their business in Suzhou urban area. Besides, we prepared questionnaires for scavengers and processing centers. The main information mentioned in the questionnaires is listed in Table 1. Also, because the quantitative information was collected from the recycling sites, the research

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Table 1 Detailed information about the questionnaires. No.

Items

1

Basic information (age, education, income, etc.) Equipment Category, quantity (mainly through estimation), price of the resources Source of the DRR Sink of the DRR How to determine the price Main factors considered during selling How to get market information Main problems and suggestions The competitive situation Other information, challenges and suggestions

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Scavengers √

Recycling sites √

Processing centers

Vehicles √

Vehicles, storage area √

Vehicles, storage area √

Residents or dustbins Recycling sites √ √ √ √

Residents or scavengers Processing centers or re-use factories √ √ √ √

Recycling sites Re-use factories √ √ √ √

The number of scavengers in the same block √

The number of recycling sites nearby √

The number of processing centers √

of the scavengers and processing centers was mainly did by interviews as described in Section 3.2.2. 3.2.2. Interviews The scavengers and the processing factories were important participants in the recycling system. The study interviewed scavengers especially for their difficulties and suggestions for the establishing of the formal recycling system. The study interviewed the operators of the processing centers mainly for the processing methods for different kinds of recyclable resources. We interviewed 7 scavengers and 7 processing centers that covered every kind of DRR we are concerned about, so we can get enough information for the study. The surveyors first went to recycling sites all around the Suzhou urban area to interview the scavengers who come to trade; then the surveyors went to the processing centers that usually trade with these recycling sites. The surveyors also went to some processing centers in the suburbs to pick some representatives to do the interview. This research also interviewed 4 government officers from the sanitation department of Suzhou and 2 staffs from the Suzhou Recyclable Resources Industry Association to get to know the recycling management situation and plans in Suzhou urban area. The interview of the government officers and the association staffs was meant to know their plan of the recycling industry and their attitude towards the informal system, like the difficulties in the management of the informal ones, if they are willing to provide money and facilities in order to integrate the informal system into the formal waste management system. Also, after we got the result from the survey and interview of the recycling system, we held a seminar with these officers and staffs as well as some experts in this area to discuss the reliability of our result. 3.3. Methodology to obtain the result Based on “Pressure–State–Response” (PSR) model structure, this paper studies the problems and challenges in the DRR recycling system, and gives targeted policy suggestions. PSR structure model is one of the modes that evaluate the resource utilization and sustainable development (Wolfslehner and Vacik, 2008; OECD, 1994). In this paper, the Pressure indicators are the factors that influence the DRR recycling system, which can be divided into demography factors, economic factors, social factors and market factors; the State indicator stands for the recycling activities in the system at present; the Response indicators are the policies that we suggest. Also, in this paper, the PSR structure model is not only an approach of the study, it also provide a good way to summarize the results and suggestions.

×

3.3.1. Summarization of the influence factors (Pressure) We used statistical analysis of the interviews to summarize the influence factors. We asked the practitioners how they decided to sell the recyclables, the difficulties of their business and other things that influence the recycling market, and we summarized the most mentioned factors. 3.3.2. Estimation of the case’s flow amount (State) Besides the qualitative performance of the recycling system, the quantitate flows of the case study are an important part to understand the function way of the system, therefore, we used flow analysis to estimate the recycled amounts of the DRR and the cash flow. The DRR flow amount should fulfill the following equation:

 =

mi,produced =





mi,formalrecyclingsites +

mi,formalprocessingcenters +





mi,informalrecyclingsites

mi,informalprocessingcenters

where mi,produced : the total amount of recyclable material (i) produce by the producers (residents, enterprises, public institutions and so on); mi,formal/informalrecyclingsites : the total amount of recyclable material (i) recycled by the formal/informal recycling sites; mi,formal/informalprocessingcenters : the total amount of recyclable material (i) recycled by the formal/informal processing centers. Also, for each kind of participators, the flow amount should follow:



mi,input =



mi,output

where mi,input : the total amount of recyclable material (i) enters flow; mi,output : the total amount of recyclable material (i) leaves flow. 3.3.3. Recommendation of policy suggestions (Response) The results from the foregoing steps were taken into consideration for proposing policy suggestions. All the interviews conducted in the research were taken into consideration as well as other researches about this topic. 4. Result and discussion The result was organized under the PSR model structure (Fig. 5). 4.1. Pressure: the factors that influence the system 4.1.1. Demography factors Due to the low profit and low income at the front-end of the DRR recycling industry, the scavengers and almost all of the recycling sites employees have low education levels. Based on the interview, about 70% of them do not even hold a high school degree. Due to

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Fig. 5. The “Pressure–State–Response” model structure of the DRR recycling system.

the lack of professional knowledge and legal consciousness, there were illegal situation in the recycling process of informal system, such as selling stolen goods (as stipulated in the “Measures for the administration of recyclable resources recycling” that promulgated by the Ministry of Commerce and other 5 ministries in 2007, the trading of stolen goods is strictly banned), short in weight, stacking materials in the public area and so on. These behaviors had threat to the healthy development of the recycling system. 4.1.2. Economic factors Based on the survey and interview, we found that the economic factors were the most important factors that influenced the flow of DRR. This factor is also reported as one of the most important factors in other studies (Sembiring and Nitivattananon, 2010). In the actual process, it means that the recyclers at all level tended to sell the DRR to the recyclers that provide higher prices. At the start of the recycling chain, residents’ attention to the price was relatively low. Interviews with residents showed that about 40% of residents attached much importance to prices; these mainly consisted of elderly residents. The other 60% of residents did not pay much attention to recycling prices. There were two main reasons. First, the amount that the residents traded each time was relatively low and the profits they gained were small. Meanwhile, the gap between two recycling sites was usually less than 1 RMB, so the profits they obtained from different recycling sites did not have a significant difference. Second, most residents were not willing to spend time to find sites that provided higher prices, so they sold their DRR to nearby sites. After the DRR was gathered in the larger-scale recycling facilities, the operators of these facilities all considered prices as the most important factor when they decided where to sell these DRR. Over 80% of the interviewees also clearly claimed that prices were the

most important factor they considered when they decided where to sell. 4.1.3. Social factors The social factor that influence the DRR recycling system was the social relationship network among the recycling practitioners, in particular it was the familiarity between practitioners. This factor generally concerns the personal relationship between two recycling practitioners, such as coming from the same hometown, having a similar social network or having been trading with each other for a relatively long time. Recycling practitioners at every stage all liked to trade with more familiar people and factories. For scavengers and residents, the factors which influenced their degree of familiarity were the native places and operating time of the practitioners. Generally, the longer the practitioners had been running recycling businesses in a certain area, the more familiar they would be with the scavengers and residents in that area. Meanwhile, scavengers and recycling practitioners who had the same native place also found it easier to trade. For recycling sites and processing centers, the degree of familiarity was usually based on long-term trade activities. Some interviewees from the recycling sites stated that the recycling prices for different processing centers and recycling factories usually did not differ a lot, so they were used to sell the DRR to the processing centers and recycling factories that they were more familiar with. In this survey, 88% of recycling sites had been trading with the same processing center or recycling company for a long time. 4.1.4. Market factors There were two major market factors that influence the DRR recycling system. The first was the information flow in the recycling

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23% 24%

3% door to door asking contact through mobile phones

20%

30%

communication with relatives well-connected with many recyclers not clear

Fig. 6. Routes for obtaining information for different recycling sites.

4000

of sites whose amount recycled was less than 1000 kg/d notably increased. Therefore, as the density of recycling sites increased, the number of sites with lower amounts recycled would also increase. But for a few sites which had the capacity to recycle a high amount, the influence of density was not very obvious.

2000

4.2. State: the quantitate flows of the case study

Amount recycled (kg/d)

8000 6000

0 0

0~2

3~5

6~8

9~12

Number of nearby recycling sites Fig. 7. The relation between the amount recycled and the number of nearby recycling sites.

market; it means from what channels that the recycling practitioners could get the information of the next DRR buyers. The channels for obtaining information were also an important factor. This factor mainly influenced the price information the recycling practitioners had when they decided where to sell. Scavengers and residents usually went to the recycling sites or processing centers within a certain range to ask about price information; they could also get the information through communication with other scavengers and residents. For recycling sites, the information channels are shown in Fig. 6. 30% of the sites got their price information through communication with friends and relatives who were in the recycling business; 20% of sites got their price information through communication with the processing centers and re-use plants they had traded with before; 24% of owners of recycling sites went to some processing centers and re-use plants to ask for price information − this kind of situation was more common in the plastics recycling system, because the processing centers for plastics had a relatively concentrated distribution; there were also about 3% of sites whose owners had been in the business for a very long time and had established a large network of connections, so they could get the information through all the channels mentioned above. The second market factors was the competition situation between the recycling practitioners. For example, the density of the recycling facilities was an important indicator that reflect the competition level of the recycling sites. If there were too many recycling sites in a certain area, the amount recycled and operating conditions of these sites would be seriously affected. Therefore, this study calculated the number of recycling sites within 1 km of another site to analyze the influence of this factor. Because the number of recycling sites often changes, the study divided them into four levels: 0–2; 3–5; 6–8; and 9 or more (Fig. 7). As the number of nearby recycling sites rose, the highest recycling amount of most sites clearly declined, and the number

Because the quantitate information was collected through filed research, and the most of the recycling participators did not record their transactions, so there exists uncertainty in the result that we could not give a specific range. Therefore, after we conducted the survey and interviews, we held meetings with the government departments, industry associations and related experts to discuss the reliability of the quantitate results. These officers and experts all agreed that the result of this research was reliable in the certain range, and basically identical with their experience cognitive for years work in this area. 4.2.1. The flow amount and directions The structure of the recycling system in Suzhou is shown in Fig. 8. The recycling sites were the crucial links. Based on the survey, in 2013, the average amount recycled at each site was 800 kg/d. For the 250 recycling sites in the whole system, we estimate that the amount recycled is about 200t/d, i.e. 73 kt/a. The recycling amount per capita is 266 kg/a, which is much higher than the average level across China (108 kg/a) (Wang, 2008). Based on the questionnaire survey of the recycling sites, the flow amounts that are connected directly with the recycling sites could be estimated. For the flows that were not directly connected with the recycling sites, we mainly estimated the flow amounts based on the interview of processing centers and the management department. These flows are expressed with dashed lines. It can also be seen in Fig. 8 that about 60% of DRR is recycled through scavengers and the other 40% passes directly to the recycling sites from residents. The DRR recycled by scavengers account for the larger proportion. This is mainly because many residents are reluctant to bring DRR to recycling sites because of the time involved, so they would prefer it if the recyclers provided a doorto-door recycling service; the recycling sites, on the other hand, can’t meet the needs of all door-to-door recycling demands due to limited staff. The scavengers just have the effect of collecting and transporting the DRR. Some developed countries do not have scavengers: the governments usually set curb-side recycling sites to gather DRR (Kollikkathara et al., 2009), but China does not have these facilities. On the one hand, this is because social development in China is still at an early stage, so community planning has not yet considered the construction of recycling facilities; On the other

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Consumption

Collection and separation

Re-use plants

Processing centers

4% 8%

Formal 8%

Recycling sites

12%

(16%,32t/d)

Formal Processing centers

(12%, 24t/d)

Informal Total DRR recycled from the costumers such as residents, public facilities and so on.

60%

12% 60%

Informal

Scavengers

Re-use factories

Processing centers

(60%, 120t/d)

52%

Informal

65% (65%, 153t/d)

Recycling sites

Formal

(92%, 184t/d) 5%

(100%, 200t/d) (84%,168t/d) 32%

16% 3%

Informal Re-use factories (8%, 16t/d)

Fig. 8. The flow amounts and directions of DRR in the Suzhou urban area.

hand, there are many people whose incomes are very low and need to pick out the recyclable part of garbage to make money, so even if there are curb-side recycling sites, the DRR that residents put in would still be picked up by the scavengers. After recycling sites, most DRR (77%) flows to re-use factories through processing centers, the other 23% are directly sent to reuse factories. This is mainly determined by the different recovery and re-use processes of different kinds of DRR. The waste plastics and waste metals usually need to be classified and pre-processed by the processing centers, while waste fabrics can usually flow directly to the re-use factories; waste paper sometimes passes through the processing centers, but can also flow directly to the re-use factories. The collection, separation and processing steps are mainly carried out by informal personnel, while the re-use stage is mainly carried out by formal agencies. The reason for this situation is the

recycling policy of every industrial sector in China at present: these policies have started the recognition of qualifications of re-use factories. For example, in recent years, the government enacted “Waste iron and steel processing industry access conditions”, and certified a batch of qualified waste iron and steel recycling and re-use enterprises (MIIT, 2012); these factories could be considered as parts of a formal system. Therefore, most (about 92%) DRR is reused in the formal factories, while only 8% of DRR flows to some small informal factories. Compared with the re-use part, the construction of the collection and processing parts is obviously lagging, so the collection, separation and processing parts are still operated mainly by informal participants as they were in the past. The volume of residential garbage disposed in urban areas was 254.93 kt in 2013 (BSS, 2014), so the resources recovery rate can

Fig. 9. The economic interest distribution of the recycling system.

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Millions RMB

70

83

90 80

60

70 50

60 50

40

40 30 30 20

20 10

10

0 Formal

0 paper residents

metal

recycling sites

plastic fabric scavengers

Scavengers

processing centers

Processing centers

Informal Recycling sites

a) The cash distribution of every kinds of DRR b) The cash distribution in formal and informal system Fig. 10. The economic interest distribution of the recycling system.

be concluded by the recycled amount (73 kt) divided by the total waste produced (73 kt plus 254.93 kt); the result is 22.3%. The recovery rate is almost the same as some regions which have better garbage sorting processes such as Guangzhou and Beijing (20–30%) (Wang et al., 2008), but is still about 20% below some developed countries achieved through formal recycling system (Kollikkathara et al., 2009). Also, it is reported in India that 30–60% of all paper and cardboard, 50–80% of all plastic and close to 100% of all glass bottles are recycled by both formal and informal system (Nandy et al., 2015), which means that the efficiency of the informal system could be very high in some developing countries.

8% 35%

23%

25%

28%

25%

22%

a) Waste paper

25%

27%

34%

b) Waste metal

20%

c) Waste plastic residents

18% 28% 50%

4.2.2. Cash flow in the recycling system Because the recycling industry in developing countries is more concerned about the resources and economic value, the cash flow is very important for the adjustment of the recycling system. Based on the questionnaire survey, this part studied the interest distribution in the recycling system and identified the value-added links in the flow of DRR, so we can have a more detailed information about the operation mode of the recycling system. The interest distribution of the recycling system is shown in Figs. 9 and 10. The percentages of the profits of different participators are showed in Fig. 11. From Fig. 9, we could find that processing center and recycling site are the most important roles for the distribution of the economic interest. From Fig. 10(a), we could find that compared to the material flow in part 3.3. Even though the flow amount of waste paper was much larger than those of waste metal and waste plastic, the advantage in cash flow was not that big because of the lower unit price. From Fig. 10(b), we could find that the money earned by the informal recycling system was much more than that of the formal one, because the informal system had a larger advantage in both facilities amount and recycled material amount. From Fig. 11, we could see the difference in interest distribution of different kinds of DRR. The value of waste paper was mainly earned by residents and scavengers as the premier provider; the value added in the recycling process was relatively low. This was because the unit value of waste paper was lower and constant, and hard to get appreciation by classification and primary processing. The value of waste metal was distributed averagely in the recycling

28%

22%

29%

27%

scavengers recycling sites

26% processing centers

d) Waste fabric

e) Overall

Fig. 11. The percentages of the profits of different participators.

process, while the value of waste plastic was slightly leaned to the recycling sites and processing centers; they both had higher addedvalue in the recycling process. This was due to the waste metal and waste plastic which needed to be carefully classified before the reuse process, and the recycling sites and processing centers could earn more money by the classification and primary process. The value of waste fabric was mainly earned by the residents. Because there was no fabric processing center and reuse factory in Suzhou, the waste fabric recycled by the recycling sites would be straightly bought by the reuse factories in Shanghai. The waste fabric mainly came from the waste clothes; thus, the residents would get most of the interest. Overall, the residents, scavengers and recycling sites occupied more than 25% of the interest respectively. While, the field research revealed that because the intentionally short in weight behavior of some scavengers and informal recycling sites, the money earned by the residents is less. Also, the number of scavengers was much larger than the employees of recycling sites and processing centers, so the income level of the backend participators was still much higher than the front ones.

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20% of the sites 87% of the income

Sites income RMB/month

60000 50000 40000

40% of the sites

40% of the sites

0% of the income

13% of the income

30000 20000 10000 0 1

3

5

7

9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49

-10000

Ranking Fig. 12. The ranking of the income of the recycling sites.

However, as we estimated, the average income of the employees in recycling sites was about 1200 RMB per month in 2012, (if recycling were their only source of income), less than the average income of the rural people (1436 RMB per month) and the citizens (2770 RMB per month), and the income of the scavengers could be less. Also, Fig. 12 shows that the distribution of the income varies a lot among the recycling sites, which means that there a lot of employees in the recycling industry do not obtain enough money to support their lives. 4.3. Response: policy suggestions In view of the four factors in the Pressure part, this part gave four policy suggestions as the Response. 4.3.1. Professional training of the recycling practitioners and improve their recycling facilities In order to improve the education level of the recycling practitioners, the government could organize the training activities for them, providing them with the professional recycling knowledge, such as the standard classification and processing method of different DRR types, the laws and regulations in the recycling business and the development plans of the recycling system. Meanwhile, for the practitioners who are willing to enter the formal system, the government can provide them with some recycling facilities, such as the vehicles, weighing equipment and storage yard, and avoid the regulation violating phenomenon like storage in pubic area and short in weight. We thought these training could be held by the industry associations, because they usually have a better relationship and familiarities with the recycling participators. 4.3.2. Giving the formal recycling system a price advantage Economic factors were important elements that influenced the flow of DRR; the buying prices in every facility were decided by the selling prices of this facility. For example, the prices at which recycling sites buy the DRR from scavengers and residents were determined by the prices at which the sites sold it to the processing centers, minus the costs of recycling and a certain profit space; the profit spaces were almost identical for different sites. Therefore, the trade prices in every recycling chain were determined by the price at which the DRR was sold to the recycling factories in the last link of the chain, minus the costs and profits in every link. To guide the DRR flow to standard recycling facilities, the government needs

to endow the standard recycling channels with a price advantage through taxes repay or subsides. However, standard recycling facilities always have higher operational costs due to environmental protection requirements and relevant taxes, while irregular recycling facilities lack these additional costs. Therefore, in order to make the standard recycling chains have a price advantage, the government should provide preferential fiscal and taxation policies for these recycling practitioners, such as tax deductions and subsidies. China had provided a 10% deduction of value-added tax for recycling factories, which helped the recycling industry hit its peak in around 2008. However, the deduction of the value-added tax was cancelled in 2010, which constituted a great blow to the recycling industry. Many recycling factory owners have indicated that since the cancellation of the tax deduction, their profits keep decreasing, which has led to a significant decrease in the amount recycled. Fortunately, the Ministry of Finance published a new “Value-added tax refund on the production and services of resource comprehensive utilization” in June 2015, which can give 30%–70% tax refund for the reuse factories that meet the certain standard, (MOF, 2015) and the recycling could be promoted hopefully. Different from previous policies, this tax refund was given to the factories that use recycled material to produce products (reuse factories), not to the factories that only bought recyclables and resold them (recycle factories). Because compared with the recycle factories, the reuse factories have higher entry barriers and larger size, and could meet higher management and environmental protection standards. So the tax incentives for such companies could effectively guide the recyclable resources flow to formal recycling systems, and help the country to build a formal and legal recycle industry. The Extended Responsibility of Producers (ERP) system is widely used all around the world to promote recycling (Roine and Lee, 2006; Yoon et al., 2006; Zhang and Wei, 2009). In the EPR system, producers shoulder the responsibility for recycling goods after their lifecycle, whether by directly recycling the waste goods themselves or by subsidizing the resource recycling system. Whilst China has passed some laws for establishing an ERP system, detailed arrangements have not yet been carried out (Mo et al., 2009). We suggest that the government support the growth of an environmentally friendly recycling system through direct financial subsidies, or indirect subsidies such as supporting the regional treatment center foundation through special policies like preferential measures in land rent, technology development, and the like.

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4.3.3. Facilitating information exchange The information the recycling practitioners had influenced the judgments they made for the flow direction of the DRR. In order to promote better communication of information between practitioners, the government could set up information exchange channels such as information platforms to give practitioners access to more comprehensive information so that they can make better decisions. Also, a good information platform could increase the degree of familiarity between the recyclers. Suzhou has set up some online trading platforms for recyclable resources such as “5R Net” (www.5rchina.com). However, these platforms are mainly used for the industrial recyclable resources sector. So we suggest that the government establish some online platforms for the trade of DRR, and these platforms could mainly meet the needs of residents and DRR recycling practitioners. These platforms usually set up by the industry associations, but we think the commercial departments and the Development and Reform Commission should provide support and supervision. With regards to technological means, the relevant departments could use IoT (Internet of Things) and GIS to gather recycling prices, distribution details and other information on the recycling facilities, and use the platforms to provide this information to all of the recycling practitioners and promote the exchange of relevant information. Our research team in Tsinghua University has launched such a program. Meanwhile, the situation in developed countries is different. The DRR recycling industry in most developed countries is handled by governments, so these countries do not have the need to establish similar platforms.

suggestions in the framework of Pressure–State–Response (PSR) model. According to the results, it can be concluded that the informal system in Suzhou urban area was a typical profit-driven system. However, because of the low education level and other demographic factors, the faction way of this system was laggard and the information communication was not efficient, which caused the optimization of the DRR flow to be very hard. Also, most policies that are concerned about the DRR recycling were forced on the household separation and the establishment of the formal system. Because of the lack of attention of the informal system, these policies have little effect. Therefore, in order to integrate the informal recycling system into the formal recycling management system, the government could give superiorities for those recyclers that are willing to join the formal system, such as professional training, tax deduction, information platforms and recycling equipment. Also, from the macro point of view, the government needs to establish a complete resource management system with a complete EPR system and appropriate recycling facilities distribution. In addition, in this research, we were glad to find that some new policies have begun to pay attention on the informal system, and some government officers have also changed their understanding of the informal participators. This trend has made the study on informal system more significant than it ever did, and hopefully it will be enhanced by building better recycling systems.

4.3.4. Optimize the recycling facilities distribution Good distribution of recycling facilities should avoid having their recycling sites becoming too dense or too scattered, and ensure meeting the needs of residents and avoid waste at the same time. The distribution of recycling facilities should be optimized to ensure good recycling coverage and avoid the waste of facilities and damaging competition. There is a lot of research (Maantay and Clarke, 2006) about the optimization of MSW (municipal solid waste) collection and transportation systems, such as the optimization of MSW collection routes and the distribution, scales and capacities of transfer stations. The optimization is usually implemented through GPS and GIS systems, and the optimization algorithms are usually based on operations research theories. These methods could be generalized to research into the recycling systems of DRR. Since the majority recycling facilities are informal at the moment, when setting up new recycling facilities, the layouts of the existing facilities should be carefully investigated and considered. For example, the government should construct more recycling facilities in the areas which lack these kind of services, and avoid building many recycling facilities in the areas which already have lots of informal ones.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholars of China (71522011) and National Key Technology R&D Program of China (2011BAC06B10, 2012BAC15B01). The responsibility for any errors rests solely with the authors.

5. Conclusions At present, the studies on informal recycling systems in China are relatively few. Like other developing countries such as India, Indonesia, and Thailand, the recycling systems in most areas of China are typical examples of the informal recycling systems which are mainly operated by informal participators, while the establishment of formal systems meets certain obstruction. Therefore, we thought that the in-depth observation and research of the informal systems is urgently needed. Based on filed research, questionnaire survey and interview, this paper carefully studied the recycling paths, material flows and cash flows in the informal recycling system in Suzhou urban area, and aims to give targeted policy

Acknowledgments

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