Because of limited space, the siting and construction of a new SWM facility is a big challenge in Japan. An SWM facility should be socially accepted as well as environmentally and economically sound. This study aimed to investigate people's concerns about SWM facilities and their attitudes towards such facilities. A questionnaire was designed based on literature reviews and was sent to residents in three municipalities with different backgrounds. The questions covered concerns on the impact of an SWM facility, management aspects, unfairness of facility siting, and attitudes to facility construction.Of the many concerns, "pollution and health effect" had the highest rating, followed by "reliability", "damage to nature" and "cost". The rating was different between municipalities, reflecting their geographic and social backgrounds. Using factor analysis, correlations among concerns were analyzed, and five principal components were extracted, namely "pollution", "nuisance", "facility management", "planning of facility", and "merit/demerit". Although obvious correlations were not found between individual items of concern and attitudes to construction of a facility, the discriminant analysis indicated dominant concerns of attitudes, but the disagreement between actual impact and citizens were found. As for attributes, the "opposed" attitude decreased for residents who had visited an SWM facility, even if they had only seen it from outside.

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Municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) bottom-ash products possess qualifications to be utilized in cement production. However, the instant use of bottom ash is inhibited by a number of factors, among which the chlorine (Cl) content is always strictly restricted. In this paper, the unquenched MSWI bottom ash was used as the experimental substance, and the influences of thermal treatment and cooling methods on the content and existence of Cl in the ash residues were investigated. The characterization of the MSWI bottom-ash samples examined by utilizing X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The experimental results show that as a function of thermal treatment, the reduction rate of Cl is slight below 15.0%, which is relatively low compared with water washing process. Different cooling methods had impacts on the existing forms of Cl. It was understood that most of Cl existed in the glass phase if the bottom ash was air cooled. Contrarily in case of water-quenched bottom ash, Cl could also be accumulated in the newly-formed quench products as chloride salts or hydrate substances such as Friedel's salt.