Waste Management & Research最新文献

The environmental problems caused by plastic pollution have increased at an astonishing speed. However, attempts to study the dynamics of plastic-reducing behaviours are few and far between. In this regard, based on the attitudinal-contextual-behavioural (ABC) theory of pro-environmental behaviours, this study conducts an online survey to analyse the functioning of media exposure on Chinese consumers' three types of plastic bag reducing behaviours during shopping, including saving inner plastic packaging bags by putting many goods into one bag, hand-carrying and bringing reusable bags. Employing the snowball sampling method, this study successfully collected 361 valid questionnaires for analysis. The findings of this study indicate that environmental concern and locus of control play mediating roles between media exposure and plastic-reducing behaviours. However, the study finds no supporting evidence for the mediating function of plastic pollution knowledge. These results have implications for plastic crisis managers and governmental officials. In designing media content for environmental education campaigns, it is advisable to prioritize strategies that evoke emotions over a sole focus on disseminating knowledge about plastic pollution.

Managing solid waste continues to be an environmental, technical and economic challenge, especially for developing countries. Though these countries' urban local bodies (ULBs) are moving up the waste management hierarchy, most waste is still openly dumped. One key reason for this choice is the non-accounting of (a) social costs associated with open dumping (OD) and (b) direct/indirect benefits of other options. The current study conducts a complete social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) comparing OD to sanitary landfilling, composting, bio-methanation, incineration and gasification alternatives. The study finds that when only private costs/benefits are considered, a mix of OD and sanitary landfills is preferred; however, when external costs/benefits are factored in, the mix shifts towards alternatives like incineration and gasification. These learnings from the SCBA are then applied to Mumbai, which generates 9000 tonnes of waste daily. To determine the optimal mix for Mumbai ULB, a constrained optimization exercise is carried out considering the technical feasibility of the alternatives and the ULB's capital budget. The study finds that with the current practice of OD, the net present value (NPV) of the social costs over a 30-year horizon will be over US$ 6-9 billion. However, even if one-fifth of the ULB's capital budget is allocated towards other waste management alternatives, the mix would shift towards sophisticated technologies and the NPV of social costs would reduce to around half that amount.

Over the past decades, medical waste management (MWM) has evolved into a paramount global challenge, intertwining environmental sustainability and public health dimensions. This manuscript traces the paradigm shift from the foundational Basel Convention of 1989 to the significant sway of World Health Organization publications on contemporary debates. Utilizing a mixed approach strategy that blended qualitative and quantitative techniques, the research employed extensive literature review, co-citation and co-word analysis methodologies to ascertain the direction of contemporary trends in MWM. Within the scope of the research findings, current strategies reveal noticeable gaps, especially those that lack sound policy structures, comprehensive insights and effective operational frameworks. Co-citation evaluations spotlight predominant themes in academic references. Foremost among them are the socioeconomic factor, environmental significance, medical waste (MW) stabilization and sustainable society, sequenced by cluster magnitude. Co-word analysis unveils that, despite the long-standing presence of incineration plants, pyrolysis has, since 2016, prioritized environmental considerations. The recycling ethos peaked in 2014, but the sustainability paradigm burgeoned in 2020, with the 'circular economy' gaining momentum in 2021. Emerging trend analysis underscores the mounting significance of circular waste technologies and sustainability as indispensable solutions. Results demonstrate MW advancements and highlight emerging trends shaping the future of the field. The research concludes by accentuating the necessity of global collaborative efforts, integrating cutting-edge technologies and infusing sustainability and circularity tenets into societal frameworks to navigate MWM's intricate landscape. Future research trajectories, including wastewater governance, novel mobile waste disposal strategies and a cyclic waste classification paradigm, are proposed.

Cadmium (Cd)-enriched adsorbents wastes possess great environmental risk due to their large-scale accumulation and toxicity in the natural environment. Recycling spent Cd-enriched adsorbents into efficient catalysts for advanced applications could address the environmental issues and attain the carbon neutral goal. Herein, a facile strategy is developed for the first time to reutilize the alkali lignin (AL)-derived biochar (ALB) absorbed with Cd into cadmium sulphide (CdS)/C composite for the efficient methylene blue (MB) removal. The ALB is initially treated with Cd-containing solution, then the recycling ALB samples with adsorbed Cd are converted to the final CdS/C composite using NaS₂ as the sulphurizing reagent for vulcanization reaction. The optimal ALB400 demonstrates a high adsorption capacity of 576.0 mg g^-1 for Cd removal. Then the converted CdS/C composite shows an efficient MB removal efficiency of 94%. The photodegradation mechanism is mainly attributed to carbon components in the CdS/C composite as electron acceptor promoting the separation of photoelectrons/holes and slowing down the abrasion of CdS particles. The enhanced charge transfer and contact between the carrier and the active site thus improves the removal performance and reusability. This work not only develops a method for removing Cd from wastewater effectively and achieving the waste resource utilization but also further offers a significant guidance to use other kinds of spent heavy metal removal adsorbents for the construction of low-cost and high value-added functional materials.

Construction and demolition (C&D) waste recycling plays a significant role in waste reduction and carbon reduction, which is critical for sustainable development. However, due to various limitations such as financial problems, C&D waste recycling industry is not well developed in developing countries. To address this problem, this study combines complex network theory and evolutionary game theory to analyse the diffusion of C&D waste recycling behaviour among enterprises under governmental incentive policies within a complex network context. The results demonstrate that the size of the network has limited effects on behaviour diffusion in Watts-Strogatz small-world network. Additionally, the study highlights the clear impact of governmental incentive probability, initial rate and connection degree on the diffusion path. By quantitatively investigating the effects of incentive tools, this study contributes to the knowledge of C&D waste management and provides valuable implications for stakeholders seeking to promote the diffusion of C&D waste recycling.

In recent years, the concept of sustainability has attracted a great amount of attention, due to increasing energy resources scarceness. Waste recycling is known as an efficient approach to improve sustainability and save energy. In this view, a sustainable supply chain is established in the current study to investigate the effects of waste recycling on sustainable development. The considered supply chain consists of the government, two manufacturers, a supplier, a waste depot, and a recycler. Under this structure, two substitutable products are made of the virgin and recyclable waste materials. The supplier provides the virgin materials for the first product. The waste depot collects the non-recycled waste, whereas the recycler recycles it and supplies the recycled waste for the second product. Also, the government supports the second product to provide an incentive for its members to collect and recycle more waste. Then, the game theory is applied to make decisions under the considered structure. Finally, the results are revealed and some managerial insights are provided. It is derived that the governmental supportive policies play a significant role in resources conservation and energy storage. Moreover, increasing the quality of the product made of the recyclable waste improves the government's utility.

The biochemical methane potential (BMP) test is significant for the landfill industry as it provides a means to evaluate the gas potential, and therefore potential degradability, of both incoming and in-place municipal solid waste (MSW). However, the BMP test is not standardized making comparison of BMP results across sites problematic. For example, the BMP test duration has historically ranged from 20 days to several months with most current BMP tests lasting 60 days. However, the gas generation data can potentially be modelled for any of those durations to produce a prediction of the ultimate BMP value (BMP_ULT). Currently, the predicted BMP_ULT values of 23 long-duration (115-150 days) BMP tests were used to determine the required quantity of data (i.e. number of days) needed to produce an accurate BMP_ULT prediction. Results showed that no single test duration produced both accurate and efficient results, so a novel performance-based endpoint was proposed. The relative change in predicted BMP_ULT values with respect to time (dBMP_ULT/dt) was chosen as a potential performance-based completion metric. Results indicate that once the absolute normalized dBMP_ULT/dt value is within <2.5, <1.5 and <0.6% day^-1 that the predicted BMP_ULT is within 20, 10 and 5% of the true BMP_ULT, respectively. Overall, the use of performance-based metrics for determining BMP test completion will allow for the collection of partial data sets, reduced experimental times and verification of results.

Organic waste management is challenging in low-middle income countries. Environmental impacts and high management costs affect the sustainable development of cities, an issue that is exacerbated by the lack of social involvement. The research conducted in Iran aims to assess the benefits of organic waste home composting in Shiraz to improve solid waste management (SWM) sustainability. The introduction of a pilot project to assess home composting systems was described, together with an economic, social and environmental analysis. The current SWM system (S0) has been compared with the new strategy proposed (S1), where home composting is considered to be introduced to collect about 10% of the municipal solid waste generated in a 10-year horizon. An economic balance related to the capital costs and operational costs of both systems was introduced, in parallel with a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the SWM system, and a questionnaire survey of the local population. Results showed that S1 leads to around 5% economic savings for the municipality due to the avoidance of organic waste transportation and disposal. Environmental benefits include a lowering of CO₂-Eq emissions of about 19,076 tonnes year^-1. In addition, about 28% of the interviewed (n = 319) agreed to employ the home composting system at home (CI 5.5%, 95% of confidence level) supporting the theory that about 10% of the organic waste can be segregated and home-composted. The research underlines that home composting can contribute to improve the sustainability of SWM systems in developing countries.

This mini-review is intended to explore the innovative applications of nanoparticles (NPs) in biogas upgrading, emphasizing their capacity to enhance biogas quality. Numerous studies underscore how NPs, when applied during anaerobic digestion, can boost not only the quantity but also the quality of the produced biogas, leading to reduce significantly the concentration of hydrogen sulphide or even to remove it completely. Moreover, NPs are proving to be excellent alternatives as adsorbent materials, achieving up to 400 mg_H2S g^-1 NPs. In addition, new studies are exploring the application of NPs to increase the efficiency of biological treatments thanks to their unique features. This review also emphasizes the potential benefits and addresses the challenges that need to be overcome for these technologies to reach their full potential, ultimately contributing to the development of a sustainable and environmentally friendly energy landscape.