Although it is important that disaster waste be demolished and removed as soon as possible after a natural disaster, it is also important that its treatment is environmentally friendly and economic. Local municipalities do not conduct environmental and economic feasibility studies of pre-disaster waste management; nevertheless, pre-disaster waste management is extremely important to promote treatment of waste after natural disasters. One of the reasons that they cannot conduct such evaluations is that the methods and inventory data required for the environmental and economic evaluation does not exist. In this study, we created the inventory data needed for evaluation and constructed evaluation methods using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) methodologies for future natural disasters. We selected the Japanese town of Minami-Ise for the related case study. Firstly, we estimated that the potential disaster waste generation derived from dwellings would be approximately 554,000t. Based on this result, the land area required for all the temporary storage sites for storing the disaster waste was approximately 55ha. Although the public domain and private land area in this case study is sufficient, several sites would be necessary to transport waste to other sites with enough space because local space is scarce. Next, we created inventory data of each process such as waste transportation, operation of the temporary storage sites, and waste treatment. We evaluated the environmental burden and cost for scenarios in which the disaster waste derived from specified kinds of home appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, air-conditioners and TV sets) was transported, stored and recycled. In the scenario, CO, SO, NO and PM emissions and total cost were 142t, 7kg, 257kg, 38kg and 1772 thousand USD, respectively. We also focused on SO emission as a regional pollution source because transportation and operation of the temporary storage sites generates air pollution. If the treatment of all waste were finished in 3years, the environmental standard would be satisfied by setting work duration to 4.8h/d.
This study develops a method of environmental and economic evaluation of an integrated disaster waste management system that considers the spatial scale of removal, transport, and treatment of disaster waste. A case study was conducted on combustibles, which is a type of disaster waste derived from dwellings, in Mie Prefecture, Japan. First, we calculated the quantity and the spatial distribution of disaster waste derived from dwellings and tsunami debris produced as a result of a large-scale earthquake. The quantity of disaster waste was estimated as 7,178,000t with functioning flood-preventing facilities and 11,956,000t without functioning flood prevention facilities. Ensuring resilience in the face of earthquakes and tsunamis by renovating flood-preventing facilities is extremely important in decreasing the production of wastes, especially in coastal regions. Next, the transportation network for transporting combustibles in disaster waste to temporary storage sites, incineration plants, and landfill was constructed using an optimization model. The results showed that if flood-preventing facilities do not function properly, the installation of temporary incineration facilities becomes essential. Life-cycle emissions of CO, SO, NO, and PM and the costs of removal, storage, and treatment of combustibles were calculated as 258,000t, 618t, 1705t, 7.9t, and 246millionUSD, respectively, in the case of functioning flood-preventing facilities. If flood-preventing facilities do not function, the quantity of environmentally unfriendly emissions and the costs increase. This result suggested the significance of renovation in order to maintain the conditions of flood-preventing facilities to decrease the environmental burden and costs as well as keep the production of disaster waste at a minimum.
The main aim of this study was to examine residents’ environmental behavior in sorting solid household waste, and to identify the integrative factors that contribute to their waste-separation cooperation and other related pro-environmental behaviors. This was achieved based on a questionnaire survey in Shenyang, Chengdu, and Shanghai. Methodologically, we applied a discrete choice model to examine whether individuals’ garbage sorting behaviors differ based on their characteristics, social attributes, residential circumstances, and environmental awareness, and whether these factors are correlated with individuals’ receptiveness to a refuse charge system, or to policies requiring garbage sorting. We further examined whether individuals’ garbage sorting behavior, their receptiveness to fee-based waste collection, and their receptiveness to policies requiring garbage sorting differ across areas. In this particular survey, we introduced a 16 item scale of pro-environmental behavior and a nine item scale of altruism to ascertain the ways in which internal motivational factors affect people’s environmentally conscious voluntary behavior. Overall, the present work is expected to contribute to an important understanding of the motivational forces and incentives behind human pro-environmental behavior and action. It also brings relevance to the analysis of moral solidarity in relation to the household waste disposal problems currently confronting us today.
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