Local waste management constraints and waste administrators in China

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Waste Management 28 (2008) 272–281 www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

Local waste management constraints and waste administrators in China Shan Shan Chung a

a,*

, Carlos W.H. Lo

b

Croucher Institute for Environmental Sciences, The Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong Department of Management and Marketing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

b

Accepted 17 November 2006 Available online 5 February 2007

Abstract Local level waste authorities and their officials directly interact and serve the people on behalf of higher governments. Given the influential positions they have on the quality of life of the citizens, these local waste authorities deserve more attention from researchers. This study throws light on the factors related to local waste management and administrators that have caused waste management failures in three mainland Chinese cities. Based on a survey conducted in 2002–2003, it was found that waste administrators in these cities are not professionally competent in their jobs and they are also not confident in using economic instruments to address waste management issues in their cities. These local waste authorities are generally under-funded, and funding politics has to some extent eroded the incentives to carry out the instructions of higher waste authorities. The community at large also does not respect local waste management work. The residents frequently litter, are unobservant of waste collection times and are unwilling to pay for waste collection service. All of these are handicapping environmentally sound waste management. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Waste management failure and constraints in cities While every city desires inexpensive, efficient and environmentally effective waste management, it is generally acknowledged that developing economies are lagging behind their developed counterparts in this aspect (Agamuthu, 2003). Agamuthu (2003) remarked that common causes for the lack of good waste minimization practices in developing economies are rapid urbanization, a relatively uneducated public and the lack of corporate responsibility towards cleaner production. In developing world cities, in addition to those mentioned, constraints hampering environmentally sound waste management further include weak administrative capacity of the (waste management) authorities in mobilizing consent and trust from the community, shortage of trained personnel, limited financial resources in providing adequate waste infrastructure and inadequate legal faculty in deterring defective behaviour (The World Bank, 1997; Ferlie et al., 1996; Diaz et al., *

Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 34117741; fax: +852 34117743. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.S. Chung).

0956-053X/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2006.11.013

1997). Advancing in the industrial takeoff period with a rapid urbanization rate, China is no exception to this. A review of relevant literature on China’s waste management (The World Bank, 2005; Wei et al., 1997; Chung and Lo, 2004; Chung and Lo, in press; Lo and Chung, 2002) revealed the following major shortcomings in solid waste management: the failure to slow down waste growth, increasing recyclable contents in the waste stream especially in the more affluent areas, inadequate pollution abatement from solid waste treatment and disposal, failure to employ the best available solid waste technology, inadequate monitoring on the waste compositions and change, failure to systematize source separation of household waste and household hazardous waste, and the failure to set the right incentives in waste collection and environmental hygiene services. For instance, The World Bank (2005) pointed out that China had recently surpassed the US as the world’s largest municipal solid waste generator but the country showed little waste reduction efforts. What are the plausible causes of these worrying phenomena? Informed by other literature, causes of these problems in the developed countries can be traced back to the manage-

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ment structure, resource availability (such as financial and staffing deficiencies), the law making systems and the lack of law enforcement and the existence of policy implementation gap (Campbell, 1999; Read, 1999). Lessons specific to Jordan informed us that financial constraints, low waste management literacy of the people, lack of cooperation between the public and the private sector and limited availability of trained and skilled personnel in the waste management sector are obstacles to improving waste management (Mrayyan and Hamdi, 2006), eventhough Jordan was the first country in the Middle East to adopt a national environmental strategy. Yet, with the exception of Read (1999), all commentaries mentioned above are anecdotal or judgmental in nature. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of the waste management literature over the past decade shows that published material on how the waste administrators of China, the present waste giant, understand their own problems is non-existent. It is legitimate to ask if the perspectives found in these scholarly works are actually shared by those directly involved in day-to-day waste management in mainland China. Also, what are the considerations and constraints confronting these waste management foot soldiers in reality? As a result, the authors conducted a survey of local and grassroots-level waste administrators in three cities, namely, Guangzhou, Jiangmen and Zhongshan, to illuminate the waste management constraints in their constituencies as professed by the waste officials themselves. This paper will first briefly introduce the waste management systems of the three cities, followed by a discussion of the survey findings of local waste management constraints. A conclusion highlighting the solutions in waste management for the fast developing countries will end this paper. We believe that the findings from this research will add first hand information to the very scanty data available from the public domain on the deficiencies of local waste management authorities in their organizational capacities and the professional knowledge levels of local and grassroots-level waste administrators. We also believe that the analysis here is specific enough to point to the root cause of these deficiencies in the hope of fostering the identification of effective solutions to the problems. 2. Waste management in Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Jiangmen Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Jiangmen are Pearl River Delta cities with different administrative and socio-economic characteristics. These three cities were chosen to illustrate waste management situations in cities with varying degrees of above average economic development. Fig. 1 is a map showing part of the Pearl River Delta and these three cities. Guangzhou is the capital city of the Guangdong province and the third wealthiest city in the mainland. Since the per capita nominal GDP for Guangdong province was RMB 15,303 in 2002 (Guang-

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dong Statistical Yearbook 2003,, US$1  RMB8.2), Jiangmen was a more typical Guangdong city than Zhongshan or Guangzhou in terms of income and development levels (see Table 1). While Zhongshan and Jiangmen are both prefectural level cities, the former is considered one of the top performers, not only because of its higher per capita GDP but also because Zhongshan came forth in urban planning, environmental hygiene, environmental protection and civility.1 What’s more, her mayor, Huang Ziqiang was also the recipient of the ‘‘Habitat Scroll of Honour Award’’ in 1997. Instead of showing the most updated socio-economic data of the three cities, Table 1 presents data from 2001 to 2002. This is because these are the years where our surveys2 were conducted and are thus more relevant to the present context than the latest situations. According to The World Bank (2005), all these three cities are large Chinese cities because each city has a population in excess of 750,000. However, as showed in this paper, even within the ‘‘large city’’ category, there are considerable variations in their organizational capacities and the knowledge levels of the waste officials. As a result, this paper supplements the 2005 World Bank report, which was based on the data and information of one province (Shanghai) and two provincial capital cities, namely, Kunming and Chongqing, by offering the perspectives of local waste administrators in some perfectural level cities in Pearl River Delta. The authors also acknowledge that this is not a statistical representation of waste administrators. However, our results provide an understanding of the internal views on some typical local government level waste management systems. Evident in Table 1, Guangzhou generates significantly more waste both on a per capita basis and in total than Zhongshan and Jiangmen. While Guangzhou has been relying on a mega landfill, the Xingfeng Landfill, for waste treatment at present, it is planning for a number of waste facilities, including two modern municipal waste incinerators with one due to be commissioned in the very near future (Zuo, 2002; 2001; Lin and Yang, undated), at least one automatic refuse collection system and an integrated waste facility (Liao et al., 2006). For Jiangmen, landfill disposal is the only means at present and in the near future. In contrast, Zhongshan also operates two incinerators. However, the emissions from the incinerators have been found to exceed legal standards most of the time (Li, J., personal communication on 21st August 2002). Although the public may expect that all landfills in these three cities comply with the national guidelines, the Xingf-

1

Among others, Zhongshan has been awarded with the following titles: National Level Hygienic City (Guojia weisheng chengshi), National Environmental Model City (Quanguo huanbao mofan chengshi), Advanced City of the National Civil City Creation Scheme (Quanguo changjian wenming chengshi gongzuo xianjin chengshi) and the Civil City of Guangdong (Guangdongsheng wenming chengshi). 2 The World Bank’s report (2005) is also based on 2002 data.

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Fig. 1. Geographical locations of Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Jiangmen.

Table 1 Administrative, socio-economic characteristics, waste management situations and survey details of the cities studied

Permanent population Floating population Nominal GDP per capitaa (RMB) Territorial extent of the urban area MSW (metric tons per day) Per capita MSW generation rate Municipal solid waste facilities Remaining life span of landfills (as of 2000) Administrative structure Analysis of waste composition

Guangzhou (2002)

Zhongshan (2001)

Jiangmen (2002)

5.82 million 2.9 million 41,884

2.36 million 1 million 26,994

3.81 million 0.4 million 17,344

3718.5 km2

13.4 km2b

180 km2

7123 1.22 kg/day

800c 0.85 kg/day

255 (2000) 0.8 kg/day

1 sanitary landfill and 1 incinerator (to be commissioned in 2005) 19 years

2 sanitary landfills and 2 incinerators 1.5 years

1 sanitary landfill

10 districts and 2 county level cities

1 street and 19 towns

Annual

Irregular and infrequent

6 years 5 county level cities, 2 districts, 7 streets and 4 towns Never

US$1  RMB8.2 Sources: Data cited or derived from Administrative Map of Guangdong (2000), Guangdong Statistical Yearbook 2003 (2003), Zhongshan Statistics Bureau (2002), Municipal Government of Jiangmen (2002), Guangdong Statistical Yearbook 2003 (2003), Zhongshan Statistical Yearbook 2002 (2002); Li, J., personal communication on 21st August 2002; Chen, H.J., personal communication on 16th January 2002, Lin and Yang (undated). a Keys: including the non-surveyed towns and county cities of the prefectural city being studied. b Area of Shiqi, the central administration district of Zhongshan only. c Waste disposal figure includes the city of Zhongshan and five other towns. Separate figures for the city alone are not available.

eng landfill is the only one with state-of-the-art double impermeable liners, a landfill gas system and a leachate collection system. All of the 400 tonnes of treated effluent will be reused on site in daily operations or will be recirculated

in the landfill if deemed necessary (Zuo, 2002; Li, 2002). The pollution abatement measures in the Xingfeng landfill are considered of exceptional standard in mainland China not only because the measures surpass the national pollu-

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tion control requirements for municipal waste landfill (GB16887-1997), but also because only 4.9% of the sanitary landfills in China were in full compliance with the national technical prescription (Li et al., 2002), not to mention international standards. The findings from the most recent waste characterization study for Guangzhou and Zhongshan indicated that putrescible material is the major waste type in the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream, composing more than 50% for Zhongshan and Guangzhou. The composition of the rest of the MSW stream in Zhongshan was 12–17% plastics, 7–9% wastepaper, 13–18% ash and bricks, 2–3% glass, 2.5% rags and less than 1% metals (Zhongshan Environmental Sanitation Technology Institute, 1999). In Guangzhou, plastics made up 22%, paper and rags about 8%, while metals, glass and rubber 5% (Ou, 2003) and ash less than 1% of the MSW in 2001 (Ou, 2002). Fig. 2 depicts the interrelationship between various parties in the waste management of the three cities. 3. Methodology of the study To include all levels of local waste management organizations in the three cities, three types of waste management authorities were surveyed: (i) Municipal and district Environmental Sanitation Bureaus (ESBs) – They are charged with the planning of MSW facilities and the implementation of MSW policies in the respective city. They are also the only organization at the municipal level to manage MSW. In some cities, such as Zhongshan, they may be called environmental sanitation offices instead.

*

Depending on local context, either a user pay mechanism or an indirect subvention from the District Government is present.

professional leadership $ Municipal ESB

District ESBs

financial support administrative leadership

$

District Governments

$*

ESSs

$* Households

$ Residents Committees

Fig. 2. Waste management bodies and their interrelationships in China.

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(ii) Grassroots-level Environmental Sanitation Stations (ESSs) – They are responsible for MSW collection and street cleaning. They are essentially the municipal cleansing team and there is at least one ESS for each district. (iii) Waste management research institute – Among the three cities, only the Guangzhou ESB has a waste research institute of its own, namely, the Guangzhou Environmental Sanitation Research Institute. It is the only official institute specialized in waste management research in southern China. It also provides waste management consultancy service to the rest of the Pearl River Delta cities. In order to solicit substantial return, the survey was anonymous and questionnaires were distributed to the target population in 2002 through one senior official from each of the following organizations: (i) the ESB of Jiangmen, (ii) the environmental sanitation office of Zhongshan and (iii) the Guangzhou Research Institute for Environmental Sciences. A major difficulty encountered was that the research team was not able to specify the way the questionnaires would be distributed. For instance, we are not able to obtain a staff list of all waste administrators in the organizations mentioned above and thus select the recipients by systematic or simple random sampling method. Instead, we relied solely on the personal network and seniority of the senior officials distributing the questionnaires to solicit participation in the survey. We acknowledge that considerable bias may exist in this kind of sample selection method. A total of 174 usable questionnaires were collected with 92 from Guangzhou, 45 from Jiangmen and 37 from Zhongshan. The respondents are collectively called waste administrators in this paper. About 52% (N = 170) of the respondents are frontline inspector grade government officials who frequently come into contact with individual members of the general public. Others include lower-tiered management (26.5%), technical grade officer (8.8%) and heads of departments or offices (6.5%). Only three respondents are providing logistical support for the ESB but are not directly engaged in waste management. According to the senior officials distributing and collecting the questionnaires for us, the response rate is about 50%. A considerable number of non-responses to items were found. This is particularly the case with the questions on policy preferences (37–40% missing) and personal particulars (4% missing for age, 13% for gender, 9% for education and 7.5% for salary). Declining to provide personal particulars may be an indication that the respondents do not want to provide information by which they could be identified. 4. Analytical structure, survey results and discussion Informed by the literature on policy implementation and studies on environmental policy (Ma and Ortolano, 2000;

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The World Bank, 1997; Ferlie et al., 1996; Richards et al., 2002; Read, 1999), four generic groups of constraints are likely to cause waste management failure: (i) technology, (ii) waste management literacy, (iii) organizational capacity, and (iv) external support. Findings will be discussed under these headings. 4.1. Technological capacity and waste management literacy Apparently, few modern waste technologies are relevant to these grassroots-level waste authorities. Thus, the researchers have combined this variable with the waste literacy variable in the survey. In the survey, we try to gauge the waste management and technological literacy of the waste administrators of the three cities by first finding out if they have heard of the waste management hierarchy (WMH) and then by asking them to assess the applicability of some generic waste management options and technologies in their cities. We found that only 36% of the waste administrators have heard of the WMH, while the majority admitted that they were not aware of it (N = 164). Further examination of the data showed that waste administrators in Guangzhou (34.9%) and Zhongshan (75.7%) are better informed in this regard than their Jiangmen counterparts (4.5%) (Chi-square, v2 = 44.228; df = 2; p = 0.000). The lack of awareness of this well-known waste management ideology is noted with little surprise should one be apprised by The World Bank (2005) finding that many municipalities were unaware even of China’s own national standard for sampling and physical analysis of waste. Table 2 shows the perceived suitability of seven waste management approaches for the three cities. The F-tests showed that with the exception of waste to energy, there are statistically significant differences in the perceived suitability in all waste management options among the officials (p ranges from 0.000 to 0.008). In particular, the Bonferroni test results indicated that Guangzhou waste officials regarded sanitary landfilling and composting as less appropriate, and recovery and recycling more appropriate for their city. For source reduction, landfill mining and bioreactor, officials in Guangzhou also held views different from the Jiangmen waste administrators.

Table 2 Waste management preferences in the three cities

Sanitary landfilling Recovery and recycling Source reduction Waste to energy Composting Landfill mining Anaerobic or aerobic bioreactor

Guangzhou

Zhongshan

Jiangmen

3.34 3.75 3.29 2.61 1.79 1.94 2.10

3.86 3.00 3.25 2.80 2.50 1.95 1.68

3.95 3.20 2.89 2.51 2.52 2.53 1.69

The index has a value between 1 and 4; 4 – most appropriate and necessary, 3 – appropriate and necessary, 2 – can be used but not necessary; 1 – not appropriate.

The findings are instructive. First, it was the waste officials of the capital city of Guangdong who assigned the greatest importance to waste recycling and source reduction, and not the officials who were more familiar with the WMH. So, having knowledge of the WMH does not necessarily imply endorsing it. Second, waste administrators of Jiangmen and Zhongshan favored continued recourse to landfill at the expense of waste recovery and recycling. Third, we encountered the highest item nonresponse for ranking the suitability of bioreactor in this question. This may indicate that it is the most unfamiliar waste treatment/disposal option for our respondents. Yet, Guangzhou officials are relatively more knowledgeable of this less commonly used technique than their counterparts in the other two lower-rank cities, plausibly because of the adoption of leachate recirculation systems in the sanitary landfill in Guangzhou. Thus, it appears that waste management literacy of the waste administrators is associated with the socio-economic status of the city and the more developed the city is, the more knowledgeable the waste administrators are. 4.2. Organization’s capacity to adopt market-based instruments Proper use of economic measures removes cross-subsidization in waste management, promotes resource conserving waste management methods and may channel revenue for waste management improvement. As a result, the ability to make use of economic instruments in accordance with the polluter pay principle is indicative of the organization’s capacity to deliver proper waste management. Yet, existing policies in the three cities do not involve the effective use of economic instruments to control waste growth. In Guangzhou, other than the monthly waste collection charge of RMB10 per household (US$1  RMB8.2), the only other economic measure adopted is the waste disposal charge of RMB5/household/month, levied since March 2002 (Guangzhou City Construction Bureau, 2002). However, both are flat-rate charges and present no economic incentives for waste reduction and recycling for waste generators. Similarly, no economic instruments, other than flatrate charges are levied on waste management in Zhongshan and Jiangmen.3 To get more information in this regard, we solicited the views of the respondents about their preferences for nine policy instruments (from four generic types of policy measures, namely economic, command and control, technological and administrative measures) for managing 12 different waste issues. To exhaust the logical possibilities, the respondents were also allowed to choose option 10, which meant that the issue was not considered a problem. The 3 China’s Ministry of Finance has introduced nationwide a 5% consumption tax on imported disposable wooden chopsticks since 1st April, 2006 (Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation, 2006), allegedly as a measure mainly to arrest forest depletion.

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results are summarized in Table 3. Regarding the issues set out, the respondents generally agreed that all of the issues listed were problems in their constituencies. Only less than 9% of the respondents considered ‘‘high level of putrescibles in waste stream’’, ‘‘high recyclable content in waste’’ and ‘‘malpractice of waste traders’’ not to be problems in their constituencies. In terms of the appropriate solutions to the noted problems, it is apparent that economic instruments were generally less favored than regulatory measures by the mainland Chinese waste administrators. The high preference score for extended producer responsibility (EPR) warrants some explanations. Article 5 of the Law on Solid Waste Pollution and Its Prevention of the People’s Republic of China (2004) is silent on whether economic instruments will be used to foster the producers’ take back liability. It is reasonable, therefore, to believe that the preferred form of EPR in the minds of Chinese waste administrators is legislative based emphasizing producers’ liability with little market-based elements. Despite the rapid economic development, the legacy of a planned economy is still strong in mainland China. Thus, the lukewarm popularity in economic instruments among mainland waste administrators should not come as a surprise. Yet it contrasts sharply with the waste and environmental policy preferences of local government in other countries. In New Zealand, for example, Boyle (2000) found that among all of the six types of solutions, namely, economics, management and policy, education and engineering, coordination, guidelines and legislation, the territory authorities (the equivalence of local government in New Zealand) preferred economic solutions the most. Even in Estonia, part of the former Soviet Union, packaging charges are imposed on each unit of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages for financing the collection and disposal of packaging materials (WARMER Bulletin, 2003).

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4.3. Organization’s administrative capacity Rules on budget allocation (informal or formal) may perversely influence the administrative capacity of the organization. Two such rules were found in the mainland Chinese context. First, the budget of the waste authorities and the bonus of refuse collection vehicle drivers are said to vary directly in proportion to waste generation of the city or the waste load (Hu, 1997; Chung and Poon, 2001). This is known to be the case in Pearl River Delta cities especially before the privatization reform has taken place. As a result, there was an incentive to over-report waste generation in the hope to get more revenue, although some ESBs were using various means to eradicate this kind of informal reward. The second and a formal rule concern the politics of organizational funding. It is shown in Fig. 2 that the operation budgets of local waste authorities, namely District ESBs, are provided by the District government who derived their revenues from the tax money of their constituencies (Chung and Poon, 2001). Thus, the size of the budget of District ESBs depends on political apportioning of local tax revenue rather than their waste management performance. In this connection, waste management instructions from the municipal waste authorities, i.e., the Municipal ESBs, command less value than the instructions from the District government as the former does not have any influence on the annual budget grant of District ESBs. A third factor for weak municipal waste service arose because of the generally insufficient public expenditure granted. To sustain the normal waste management service, local waste authorities often try to source their own income by engaging in providing waste management and cleansing services to the commercial, industrial and even domestic users for a fee.

Table 3 Policy instruments and waste management issues for the waste official survey Policy instruments

Preference score

Issues

1. Stricter law and/or higher penalty (top choice for a, i & k)

1370

2. Stricter law enforcement (top choice for f & l)

1032

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

1098 413 681 745 246

a. Littering b. Polystyrene waste c. Plastic bags d. Consumer battery waste e. Electronic & electrical waste f. Other household hazardous waste

EPR (top choice for b, c, d & e) More training and education for the waste administrators Public environmental education Economic instruments (top choice for e & g) Voluntary measures (e.g. voluntary agreement, campaign, awards, code of practices, ISO14001 standards etc.)

8. Technological measures (top choice for h & j ) 9. Government funded research & development 10. No such problem is noted

629 414

g. Rapid domestic waste growth h. Organic putrescible waste i. In adequate waste facilities j. High recyclable content in the waste stream k. Malpractice in the recycling sector l. Waste scavenging

The preference score is obtained by aggregating all the answers from respondents by giving 3 points to each first choice, 2 points to each second choice and 1 point to each third choice indicated.

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Given such contextual background, we intended to find out the extent to which the above perverse phenomena were present in the three cities at the time of the survey by asking the respondents to indicate their agreement with the statements shown in Table 4. With 38.5% of the respondents in total agreement and an averaged score of 5.01 for statement 7 in Table 4, it is evident that District governments, being the contributors of the budget of sub-municipal level waste management authorities (i.e., District ESBs), their non-waste management related instructions are much more respected than instructions from the municipal ESB, their immediate supervisor in waste management duties. While it is true that financial commitment on local waste management is inadequate in all cities and therefore local waste authorities are required to seek additional revenue from providing services to the community for a fee (31.1% in total agreement with statement 5 in Table 4, average score = 4.63), such a practice was not considered to adversely affect the delivery of core services (27.8% in total disagreement with statement 6 in Table 4, average score = 3.13). It was also found that the budget size of the waste authorities, personal income and bonus of our respondents were no longer pegged in any way to the waste generation rate and the size of the community as noted in previous literature. The increasing scale of privatization in local waste management service in the Pearl River Delta cities appeared to be the reason behind this change. With privatization of waste management services, particularly in Guangzhou and Zhongshan, waste collection in a given community (or any kind of waste service) is out-sourced for a previously agreed service fee which constituted the running budget of the ESS. This is similarly the case with frontline waste workers who, under privatization, work directly for contractors and are subject to performance-based remuneration systems.

One caveat in interpreting the average scores of these statements is the high percentage of neutral responses. A neutral stance will be given a score of 4 and their dominance has reduced the standard deviations of the scores despite the substantial number of respondents in total agreement or disagreement with the statements. The high rate of neutral response is likely a result of the unwillingness of the respondents to reveal their real opinion. 4.4. Community support The World Bank report (2005) mentioned the rapidly increasing influence from non-governmental stakeholders in China on MSW and proposed a local ‘‘waste management ethic’’ that sensitizes people to set waste out at prescribed times, to source separate recyclables, to stop littering and to support waste reduction efforts. The World Bank report, however, did not detail how the Chinese communities have been reacting to grassroots-level waste management work and how they are performing in relation to the waste management ethic. The lacuna is filled here. Our survey was also designed to find out the level of community support on four phenomena: respecting waste collection hours, littering frequency, ease in collecting the waste collection charges and the (perceived) participation in government-run waste separation programs. It was found that community support on waste management work was not entirely satisfactory. Table 5 summarizes the views of the respondents. On the whole, the community could be described as one which often litters, quite often dodges waste charges and is not very cooperative in adhering to the official waste collection hours. The only exception was the more positive reaction to official recycling programs perhaps because of their habitual adaptation to a command-and-control type of society. Indicated by the relatively small proportion of neutral responses on some items and the low item non-

Table 4 Scores on statements related to administrative capacity of the organization

1. The budget size of my department is directly related to the waste generation rate of the city/district 2. The budget size of my department is directly related to the population, number of households and territorial extent of the city/district 3. My salary and bonus are directly related to waste generation rate 4. My salary and bonus are directly related the population, number of households and territorial extent of the city/ district 5. We need to rely on providing charged waste and cleaning services to subsidize core waste management services 6. The provision of charged services has reduced the amount of resources committed on major waste management servicesa 7. In major waste management policy measures, the opinion of the district government is more influential to us than the municipal ESB

Average score

Neutral (%)

3.37 3.78

18.3 20.9

3.00 2.79

16.9 21.3

4.63 3.13

34.7 34.9

5.01

16.0

The scoring scale is a 7-point Likert scale where 1 point represents total disagreement, 4 for neutral stance and 7 represents total agreement with the statement. Valid N ranges from 155 to 169. a Lack of financial resources for waste management has forced local waste authorities to source additional income by providing charged cleaning services and waste management services to the commercial and industrial or even the residential sectors (Huang, G.Y. personal communication on 15th January 2003 in Guangzhou).

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Table 5 Scores on statements related to community support

1. 2. 3. 4.

It is difficult to enlist citizen support in adhering to waste collection schedule It is easy to get people not to litter in our city Citizens are cooperative in paying waste related charges It is difficult to enlist citizen support to recover through the municipal SSP

Average score

Neutral (%)

4.52 2.45 3.68 3.87

11.5 8.6 23.0 23.6

The scoring scale is a 7-point Likert scale where 1 point represents total disagreement, 4 for neutral stance and 7 represents total agreement with the statement. Valid N ranges from 164 to166.

response rate, the findings for this set of variables were considered trustworthy. 5. Directions for change 5.1. Training up waste officials and enhancing community support On the whole, it is evident that waste management officials in Pearl River Delta cities have limited knowledge of waste management and are not confident in implementing economic instruments. Some of them also do not fully understand the rationale of the WMH. As a result, it is important to bridge the information lacuna for waste administrators of rapidly developing economies. Even more so is to ensure that the officials understand the rationale of the WMH and commit to sustainable solutions rather than quick fixes. Providing relevant professional training to local waste administrators and exposing them to overseas perspectives while broadening their horizon are two solutions. To tackle the littering problem, frontline cleaning staff can be empowered to prosecute littering offences. To reduce free-riders in waste management, modern billing methods, e.g., billing the charge for waste collection services with other utilities, can be used. However, these technical fixes will not automatically generate compliance from the community. On the other hand, competent waste administrators are more likely to gain respect, trust and thus support from the people. Thus, there are tangible benefits in training up local waste administrators. Certainly, for ultimate effectiveness in waste management, the waste management literacy of the public has to be improved. 5.2. Funding and empowerment While most rapidly developing economies are experiencing difficulties in financing local waste management, the privatization scheme in waste management service has fundamentally changed the wage structure of frontline waste workers. Financial rewards are now closely related to effective personal performance rather than waste loads. Thus, privatization has removed some long-standing institutional constraints in waste management. A further step is to replace the current regressive waste charges with incentive based waste charges, such as volume based variable rate waste collection and disposal charges, to further encourage

landfill diversion. In mainland China, the politics of organizational funding mentioned in Section 4.3 has hampered the credence of municipal waste authorities in sub-municipal waste management since waste officials may not highly prioritize the implementation of more professional instruction from the municipal waste authorities. Making local waste management self-financing has the additional advantage of empowering municipal waste authorities by rendering them financially independent of district taxation revenue. 6. Lesson for developing countries Grassroots-level local governments and waste authorities with the same ranking have been a research lacuna in solid waste management. Yet, more often than not, these government agencies directly interact and serve the people on behalf of the higher or central government. Local waste administrators are also the foot soldiers in carrying out dayto-day waste management on behalf of higher level governments. They formulate and implement local rules on waste management, nearly dictate what waste management technologies and approaches to adopt and are in control of the implementation of the public engagement process. In short, as their values and beliefs permeate deliberations on waste management, the waste management outcome of a community is very much determined by the work of these bureaucrats. Pure scientific decision making is simply not possible in such situations. Given their intimacy with the people and the influential positions they have on the quality of life of citizens, the authors are of the view that grassrootslevel local waste authorities deserve more attention from scholars and waste management researchers. One of the lessons for rapidly developing economies from the present studies is that seemingly independent problems in local waste management, however, are in fact interrelated. Variable rate waste management charge does not only give rise to waste reduction incentive, it also allows local waste authority to gain financial independence. An assumption is of course that there is transparency on how the revenue from the charge is spent and that the charge rate is high enough to cover the cost. It is a common problem that local governments (including waste authorities) in developing countries are weak at mobilizing the trust of and the cooperation from the community. Incompetence is not only found in their management skills in general but also over the technical areas.

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Present findings suggest that the waste management literacy of waste administrators in developing world cities, represented by mainland Chinese, is alarmingly inadequate for their job. As a result, continual on-the-job training is essential to foster professionalism and stakeholder engagement techniques. Such capacity building for waste administrators may be a better way to induce compliance with or the generation of the so-called waste management ethic. Nevertheless, our study also reveals some encouraging findings for developing economies. First, providing forcharge waste management services to the community is a feasible means to subsidize undercharged core waste management services and may not affect the quality of service of the latter. Second, the present study shows that one major contribution of privatization is rationalizing the incentive structure of local waste management systems. Furthermore, it appears that the socio-economic status of a city is positively correlated with the technical competence of the waste administrators. This implies that most of the problematic cases in waste management should be found in the less developed cities of the less developed economies. This points international aid and research to an important direction. Notwithstanding the conclusions drawn here, the present research has a very restricted sample pool and a relatively small sample size. We are not able to ascertain that waste administrators in other cities in mainland China are also thinking in ways similar to what we have discovered, not to mention those in other developing countries. More research covering a wider spectrum of waste managers and officials would be necessary to further confirm some of the trends and relationships noted in this research and to generate a complete picture. Nevertheless, since the information sought is often regarded as sensitive, almost insurmountable difficulty can be expected in obtaining official permission to carry out this kind of survey. Acknowledgements The research work for this paper was supported by the Hong Kong Baptist University Faculty Research Grant (project no. FRG/04-05/I-49) and Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (project no. PolyU/5231/01H, ‘‘Managing Solid Waste in the Pearl River Delta Region Cities for Urban Sustainability’’). The authors would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the invaluable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Last but not the least, the authors would like to thank all of the waste administrators that responded to the questionnaire survey. References Administrative Map of Guangdong, 2000. Maps of Guangdong Publisher, Guangzhou. Agamuthu, P., 2003. Solid waste management in developing economies – need for a paradigm shift. Waste Management and Research 21, 487.

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