Source separation of municipal solid waste: The effects of different separation methods and citizens’ inclination—case study of Changsha, China

Abstract

A case study on the source separation of municipal solid waste was performed in Changsha. An effect evaluation method based on accuracy rate and miscellany rate was proposed to study the performance of different separation methods. The site experiment result demonstrates that the two-category (food waste and other waste) method achieves the best effect. The inconsistency between people's inclination and the effect of source separation exists. The proposed method can be expanded to other cities to determine the most effective separation method during planning stages or to evaluate the performance of running source separation systems.

The Role of Food Packaging Design in Consumer Recycling Behavior—A Literature Review

“…Inhabitants attitudes and willingness to sort do not have a significant impact on their waste separation behavior. In fact, the results from five articles [18,20,63,67,90] showed that the influence of internal factors such as attitudes, willingness to sort, and environmental knowledge (ability to identify symbols, concepts, and behavior patterns related to environmental protection) together with demographic factors such as income and gender are factors that influence waste separation. These factors appear to be more important than improving the waste management system, e.g., by introducing curbside schemes, different rooms for separation of bulky and electronic waste, or increasing the availability of containers for sorting.…”

“…The review highlights the potential of the visual attributes and the quality of packaging as a communication channel for encouraging consumers to sort the food packaging waste. The efficiency of the waste management system and the quality of recycled products can hence be affected by the proper design of food packaging.Sustainability 2019, 11, 4350 2 of 23 waste management scheme, and in particular in sorting at the source, have been discussed in previous studies [1,6,[16][17][18][19][20][21]. For example, the fractions that are obtained when sorting at the source (e.g., glass, plastic, and paper) have a higher quality compared to fractions obtained when sorting at MRFs, and the source separation process is less expensive [1,3,19].…”

“…However, the validity of these methods was questioned as in some articles nearly half of the responses were identified as not being valid. For instance, Xu et al [67] only received 631 valid responses from 1515 questionnaires, and only 7427 of the responses from the 15,000 questionnaires distributed by Chen et al [18] were identified as valid responses.…”

“…Case studies were used alone or in combination with questionnaires and surveys by articles that focused on sustainable development and waste management services (12 articles). The main aim of these articles was to understand the effect of packaging attributes [56] or waste management services [18,29] on recycling behavior. In addition, case studies have been used to investigate the validity of different theories [55,68].…”

“…The main objective was to identify interventions that can influence sorting behavior and how these interventions can be altered to optimize this behavior. Household waste separation is the main focus of three articles [18,20,64], while the influence of packaging attributes (e.g., size, material, and easiness to open, clean, and seal) on recycling behavior was studied by the two other articles [56,70].…”