Comparison of municipal solid waste treatment capacity in China: a tournament graph method

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Comparison of municipal solid waste treatment capacity in China: a tournament graph method Zhujie Chu1,2 · An Zhou3 · Yifei Ma3 · Jun Zhuang4 · Ling Zhang3 · Junhua Ma5 Received: 6 March 2020 / Accepted: 2 July 2020 © Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract The amount of municipal solid waste generated has been increasing leaps and bounds in China over the years, causing widespread concern over the society’s capability to manage urban solid waste. Assessing the capacity for urban solid waste treatment has, therefore, become increasingly important. A pilot program focusing on municipal solid waste source-separated collection was launched in China’s eight major cities in 2000. Using the method of coefficient of variation to determine the appropriate index system weight, we developed a tournament graph method to assess and rank the capacity of municipal solid waste treatment across eight pilot cities. The results reveal the following ranking of solid waste treatment capacity: Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Xiamen and Guilin. Among the eight cities, Guilin appears the weakest in the capacity of solid waste treatment. The evaluation results are basically consistent with the present situation. In addition, this study found that differences in investment in treatment facilities led to a gap in the quality and quantity of waste treatment equipment, which resulted in widening differences in treatment capacity among the eight pilot cities. The tournament graph method helps identify and understand the strength of the top-ranked pilot cities in municipal solid waste treatment capacity. Keywords  Municipal solid waste · Tournament graph model · Source-separated collection · Difference · Treatment capability

Introduction Municipal solid waste (MSW) rapidly increased in recent years [1] and its treatment poses a huge challenge to local authorities in countries over the world, especially in China [2–4]. More than one-third of China’s cities are trapped in the siege of waste and two-third of them are surrounded by * Zhujie Chu [email protected] 1



School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, Shanghai 200240, China

2



China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

3

School of Economy and Management, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China

4

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

5

School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China



waste. A total of 750,000 acres of land has been occupied by China’s urban waste dumps. Nearly 140 cities in China lack facilities for the innocuous disposal of garbage. Simple landfilling and random storage pose hidden dangers to soil and water quality. Therefore, the issue of how to improve the MSW treatment capacity is significant in China. To reduce the pressure of waste treatment, as early as June 2000, C