Industrial solid waste flow analysis of eco-industrial parks: implications for sustainable waste management in China

Abstract

Sustainable waste management in the industrial ecology perspective brings enormous challenges to the existing methodology of waste analysis at the industrial park (IP) scale. In this study, a four-step method was proposed for industrial solid waste (ISW) flow analysis of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) and applied to two IPs in eastern China. According to a park-wide census of 619 industrial enterprises and 105 questionnaires by a survey from 2006 to 2008, the results indicated that: 1) at the enterprise scale, more than 60% of enterprises were small-ISW-generation enterprises which encountered great difficulties on effective waste management; 2) at the IP scale, though the two IPs have set up their own environmental management systems and passed the ISO 14001 certification, the efficiencies of the ISW management systems have yet to be improved in the industrial ecology perspective; and 3) at the regional scale, more than 97% of ISW flowed within the provincial region, indicating that the provincial governments prevented the wastes from flowing into their own “back yard”. Effective waste management should be placed in a broader perspective. Approaches to sustainable waste management may include wastes exchange, efficient waste and information flow, virtual EIP, waste minimization clubs and regionalization of waste management.

Keywords

industrial solid waste / waste flow analysis / eco-industrial parks / sustainable waste management / “not in my back yard”

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Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University by Ministry of Education of China (NCET-07-0297), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No.10DZ1200108 and 09DZ2251700), the National High-tech Research and Development Program of China (“863” Program, No.2007AA06A401), and the PhD Program Scholarship Fund of ECNU for Yongpeng LÜ (No.2010036). The authors acknowledge Xiaofei Han from Environmental Protection Bureau of Minhang and Wenli Lu from Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone Administrative Committee for their help in collecting data. Special thanks to Robyn M.B. Stuber and Xuchu Meng from University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the reviewers as well as the editors for their valuable suggestions.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg