Influences Of NIMBY Of Urban Municipal Solid Waste Treatment Facilities

During the rapid urbanization, the large-scaled municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal facilities face increasing Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) issues, which hinder the regular MSW management and the urban development. Shanghai in China, for example, faces intense pressure of disposing more than 7 million tons of MSW annually (data of 2014), which is still growing. In this respect, the scales of MSW disposal facilities in Shanghai are all top-ranked, and are expending. In addition, the facilities emit considerable pollutants though they are under monitored, due to many reasons such as the poor performance of waste classification or the disposal. Therefore, the public oppose the construction and the expansion of MSW disposal facilities near their communities. These make it instructive to study the NIMBY in developing countries, and make Shanghai an ideal case study.Given that the NIMBY issues in China present unique characteristics, comparing to those in developing countries, and that the influence machenism of NIMBY, referring to the multiple influences, the stakeholders and the regional equity, is complicated, this thesis tend to discuss two main questions as follows.Question 1:Why should the NIMBY issues of MSW facilities be studied in a process perspective? How to build the control system aiming at relieving NIMBY and how does it work?Question 2:How do the three influences, i.e. the waste classification, the type of disposal facility, and the environmental information awareness and risk perception, contribute to the NIMBY issues?The thesis then made a research into the influences of NIMBY in a process perspective, and built up the control system aiming at relieving NIMBY in developing countries, taking Shanghai as a case study area. At last, the thesis promoted some targeted measures according to the reaserach reaults.To achieve these, the thesis applied the following methods. Firstly, taking the characteristcs of NIMBY in China into consideration, the process perspective was promoted to study the NIMBY issues, after being compared to the research perspectives of presious studies. The targeted control system was then built, following by the analysis of the influences, the stakeholders and the system dimensions from the process perspective.Then, the effects of the three main influences in the control system were assessed through respective case studies. To study "the waste classification" influence, the current classification system of Shanghai was taken into simulation study to test the correct rate of public classifying behavior. And three different classification scenarios were compared to assess the consequent pollution emited from disposal facilities using the Life Cycle Assessment method (LCA). Thus the effect of different waste classifaction system on the pollution in disposal sector was assessed. To study "the type of disposal facility" influence, simulation of three different facility scenarios was run to compare the different pollution and the impacts on environment and human health, applying LCA also. The Laogang disposal facility (a MSW disposing site integrated with landfilling and incinerator) was then applied to study the diffusion pattern of the air pollutants from two different types of facilities, i.e. the landfilling and the incinerator. The pattern results were then compared with the NIMBY-referred results of a previous public survey in this region to exam the effects of pollutants on the public behavior. At last, to study the "environmental information awareness and risk perception" influence, the Jiangqiao MSW incinerator was applied as a case study, integrated with public survey, Contingent Valuation Method and statistics. The thesis presents main results and conclusion as follows.The results begin by the characteristics of NINBY in China. Comparing to those in developed countries, NIMBY issues in China are characterized by significantly high percentage of protest willingness to accept responses among the local public. In Jiangqiao case, the rate is over a half, and the the mean WTA is 1887.6 CNY per household per month. Being quite different with the commen view of this high rate of protest, the popularity of incinerator as a disposal way among the public (49.9%) is quite optimistic, as well as the trust in the government (53.1%), and the public started to show ont only to the disposal facility, but also to the classification system (51.7%). This phenomenon represents the consequent of the development of social and NIMBY issues. Besides, other typical features of the NIMBY in China refer to the weakening role of the government and the increasing heterogeneity of the public, as well as the monotonous protest topic.Given these, the process perspective is considered more appropriate to analyze the NIMBY in China and other developing countries than the previous perspectives focusing on the public protest. Firstly, the pollution and the impact on both environment and human health cuased by the disposal facilities in China are objective realities, which cannot be evaded. Secondly, the MSW management aims not only at the reduction of waste but also at public satisfaction, and the NIMBY is acturaly a deviation when the whold management system goes wrong, i.e. the NIMBY is a result of the MSW management. At last, the NIMBY drives information feedback towards previous sectors in the MSW management link, and therefore it is a window of opportunity to slove problems, in a process perspective. According to the perspective, the control system of NIMBY is of multi-dimensions, which contains the management link dimension, the flows (material flow, energy flow and information flow) dimension, the stakeholder dimension, the space dimension et al. The massive influences are defined by the dimensions and affect the NIMBY.According to the LCA simulation results, the well-performed waste classification system reduces the pollution in the disposal section and increases the compensation to the environment and human health 1.2-1.4 times more than non-classifaction scenario. And the energy recycled through incineration is 1.28 times if the organic waste is separated out. In addition, the classification system will affect the correct rates of the waste separation. The current classification system of Shanghai is designed according to the nature of waste and is present in slang what is used within the sanitation industry. This leads to a certain demand of public environmental information awareness and to the poorly performed waste classification, especially the dry waste (general waste in more expression), of which the correct rate is only 38.2% and 35.5% contaminate the recyclable waste.As a result to the current waste classification, the amount of MSW in Shanghai contains high perception of organic garbage and consequently high moisture content. And the calorific value is quite low because of the small content of plastic, paper and rubber. These characteristics lead to special demand to the disposal facility. The different types of disposal facilities significantly affect the amount and the distribution pattern of the pollutants during waste disposal. For example, the biogas facility shows a low disposal efficiency, and the environmental impact such as acidification and photochemical pollution mainly happen in the application of fertilizer in the field. Thus the biogas facility is more appropriate in rural area than in urban area. The landfilling mainly emits HCl, HF, and H2S, which are distributed in a concentric ring pattern in near-surface air, and the pollutants affect the residents living closely to the landfilling. As to the landfilling, the impact area is mainly affected by the amount of pollutants not by the climate. However to the incinerator, which emit the least pollutants among the three kinds of facilities, the distribution pattern is in a radial pattern, and the impact area is mainly affected by the climate. The statistics shows the correlation between pollutants and the public NIMBY behaviors.And the existed environmental impact and risk caused by the emission are percepted by the public, resulting in the people’s risk perception. The environmental information awareness presents significant influence towards some of the NIMBY behavior, e.g. the risk perception level, the complaint rate, the willness to attend risk communication, i.e. better awareness of the environmental information can reduce the level of percepted risk and complaint rate, and can arouse the communication interest among the public. However, the information awareness and the risk perception are not sufficient conditions to the strong protest or the trust rate of government. The current environmental communication covers limited area closely to the disposal facility, lacking in enough information and influence. The current main sources of risk information is from the neighborhood (53.7%), while the government or the facility did little work (6.0%). In this circumstance, the public obtain small awareness of environmental information and higher risk perceptance.Given to all the results as above, and the current MSW management in Shanghai, the targeted measures should consider forwarding the environment education especially about the reduction and classification of organic waste and the benefit of the disposal facilities. And the choice of MSW disposal facility should be made after the assessment of pattern of residential land in the targeted area. After the facility is sited, the land-use types in the surroundings should not be transformed into residential land or other private land-use types. Last but not the least, some environmental information platform should be built with multi-direction communication function, using the public’s preferable media.The study was supported by the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No.10DZ1200108), by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (2013GS310202), and by Shanghai Pujiang Program (No. 15PJC023). Limited by the research time period and the data access, the thesis only discussed a part of the influences of NIMBY issues. In the future research, it will be instructive to assess other influences and the multi-stakeholder involvement guidelines in the urban MSW management in developing countries.