Study on the Status and Problems of Domestic Waste Management in

China

Songwang Yang

1,* a

, Zhong Sun

2,† b

, Zizhao Zhao

, Hongyu Chen

, Na Dou

, Yao Zhao

Shuwei Zhang

and Guozhong He

1,‡ c

School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, China

Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

Keywords: Waste Management, Domestic Waste, Waste Disposal Capacity, Ecological Environment.

Abstract: Objective: This study aims to present publicly available data from the 2011-2020 China Statistical Yearbook,

analyze the status of domestic waste management in China, and create a prognostic model based on the data

analysis. Methods: By consulting the 2011-2020 China Statistical Yearbook results, this paper analyzes the

domestic waste collection and disposal in the recent ten years. A prognostic model is established to study and

identify the development trend of China’s domestic waste collection gap and disposal capacity gap in the next

five years. Results: China’s domestic waste output increased gradually from 2010 to 2019. In 2019, the

domestic waste output increased by 508.9 million tons compared with 2010, with an increased rate of 147%.

In 2019, China’s domestic waste collection gap was 612.8 million tons, with an increased rate of 144.9%

compared with 2010. In 2010 and 2019, China’s harmless disposal capacity gaps were 56.0 tons/day and

147.2 tons/day, respectively. Through the establishment of the prognostic model, the domestic waste

collection gap and harmless disposal capacity gaps in China are expected to reach 823.7 million tons and

196.2 tons/day by 2024. Conclusion: The annual increase of waste output in China is related to the increase

of per capita GDP. The waste collection and harmless disposal capacity gaps in China may continue to grow.

1 INTRODUCTION

Waste is produced by humans in their everyday life.

Due to its large discharge, complex and diverse

composition, it will pollute the environment and

affect environmental health (Xiaoyu L et al.,2019).

Waste disposal is to remove the waste quickly, carry

out harmless disposal, and finally make rational use

of it. The data from the Annual Report on the

Prevention and Control of Solid Waste Pollution in

China in 2019 shows that Shanghai has the largest

domestic waste output, with the output of 10.768

million tons, followed by Beijing, Guangzhou,

Chongqing and Shenzhen, with the output of 10.012

million tons, 8.088 million tons, 7.381 million tons,

and 7.124 million tons, respectively (China Waste

Official report,2020). In recent years, in the more

developed cities, urban domestic waste has also been

rising. It is of great significance to enhance the

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7522-053X

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3100-5053

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8022-5012

capacity of waste collection and disposal in China, to

strengthen the conservation of China’s (Yujun Y et

al.,2020) ecological environment, beautify the living

environment and improve population health.

Although domestic waste management has

achieved certain results in the context of the 13th

Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social

Development of the People’s Republic of China (The

13th five-year plan of the people's Republic of

China,2016). However, there is still a management

gap (Zongguo W et al.,2021) for domestic waste

collection and disposal in China. The key to solving

domestic waste output (Hua Z et al.,2021) in China is

to control the growth of waste output and strengthen

the effective disposal of waste. On the one hand, with

the development of China’s economy and the growth

of per capita GDP, although the consumption level of

residents continues to improve, the output of

domestic waste also increases; on the other, there is a

256

Yang, S., Sun, Z., Zhao, Z., Chen, H., Dou, N., Zhao, Y., Zhang, S. and He, G.

Study on the Status and Problems of Domestic Waste Management in China.

DOI: 10.5220/0012007800003536

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Water, Ecology and Environment (ISWEE 2022), pages 256-260

ISBN: 978-989-758-639-2; ISSN: 2975-9439

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

phenomenon that the output of domestic waste is far

larger than the amount of waste collection and

disposal (Xiangru L et al.,2019), and that the

domestic waste in China has not been collected and

disposed of effectively, so the gap of waste collection

and disposal increases. Few scholars study waste

collection and disposal to identify the pain point and

the difficulty of the current waste management from

a macro perspective.

Therefore, based on the current situation of the

growth of domestic waste in China and the analysis

of the insufficient waste collection and transportation

(WCT) and harmless disposal capacity (HDC) of

domestic waste, to review and find out waste

collection gap (WCG) and harmless disposal capacity

gap (HDCG) of domestic waste in China (Maarten

D,2021) is conducive to the effective management of

domestic waste and environmental protection.

2 METHODS

This study obtains data from the public data sources

from the China Statistical Yearbook 2011-2020.

Domestic waste in China is described by the data of

the population, GDP, waste collection, and waste

harmless disposal capacity in the China Statistical

Yearbook. Through research on previous literature

(George H et al.,2020) on domestic waste, we get the

decision coefficient between per capita GDP of China

and waste output per capita which is 0.086 (Statistics

of domestic waste treatment industry,2020); based on

this decision coefficient, the waste output per capita

(WOPC) can be calculated directly. It means that

every 0.086 tons of waste can be produced by

RMB10,000 per capita GDP. We construct the

following three related formulas (Table 1.) to do the

calculation with the specific multiplying the

population at the end of the year, the annual per capita

GDP, and decision coefficient (Formula 1).

Meanwhile, Formula 1 shows that the domestic

waste collection in China is less than the output, so

there will be a difference between the domestic waste

output and the collection amount. Therefore, the

annual waste collection gap (WCG) can be calculated

(Formula 2). Based on the AAWO, the daily waste

output can be obtained by dividing the number of

days of the corresponding year. It is found that the

waste output is also different from the harmless

disposal capacity of domestic waste. The gap of

harmless disposal of waste can be calculated

(Formula 3). Based on formulas 2 and 3, the gap of

waste collection and the harmless disposal capacity

gap are dependent variables. Taking the annual unit

time as the independent variable, the general time

series prediction model is constructed with the

application of SPSS 21.0 to forecast the trend of the

WCG and HDCG in the next five years.

Table 1. Related calculation formula.

Formulas Variables(10

eople, ￥

,10

·tons,to

ns/day

Interpretati

on of

variables

(1) AAWO=0.086

GDP

PL PL=populat

ion

(2) WCG=AAWO-

WCT

AAOW

WCG

AAWO=

average

annual

output of

waste

WCG=wast

e collection

gap

(3) HDCG=(AAWO/

YDAY)-HDC

WCT

HDCG

WCT=wast

e collection

and

transportati

HDCG=har

mless

disposal

capacity

gap

HDC HDC=harm

less

disposal

capacit

YDAY YDAY=da

correspondi

ng to the

correspondi

ng yea

3 RESULTS

We can see from table 2 that from 2010 to 2019

China’s total population increased by about 60

million, with a population growth rate of about 4.5%.

China’s per capita GDP was RMB30,000 in 2010 and

RMB71,000 in 2019, an increase of RMB41,000 in

10 years, with a growth rate of 136%. With the growth

of population and GDP, we can see that the waste

output per capita (WOPC) and average annual waste

output (AAWO) gradually increase. At the same time,

we can see that China’s WCT also grew rapidly. In

2010, China’s domestic WCT and HDC were 15804.8

tons and 38.8 tons/day, respectively. In 2019, China’s

Study on the Status and Problems of Domestic Waste Management in China

257

domestic WCT and HDC were 24206.2 tons and 87.0

tons/day, respectively. Compared with 2010, the

amount of waste collection and transportation in 2019

increased by 84.014 million tons, with a growth rate

of 53.2%. The efficiency of harmless disposal

capacity of waste in China in 2019 was about 2.2

times greater than that in 2010.

Table 2. Waste collection and disposal capacity.

Year

Pop

ulati

(10

)

(10

·￥)

(ton

(10

·t

ons)

(10

·ton

HDC

(tons/

day)

2010 134

091

3.0 0.25

3459

5.5

158

04.8

38.8

2011 134

735

3.5 0.30

4055

5.2

163

95.3

40.9

2012 135

304

3.8 0.32

4421

7.3

170

80.9

44.6

2013 136

072

4.2 0.36

4914

9.2

172

38.6

49.2

2014 136

782

4.7 0.40

5528

7.3

178

60.2

53.3

2015 137

462

5.0 0.43 5910

8.7

191

41.9

57.7

2016 138

271

5.4 0.46

6421

3.1

203

62.0

62.1

2017 139

008

6.0 0.51

7172

8.1

215

20.9

68.0

2018 139

538

6.5 0.55

7800

1.7

228

01.8

76.6

2019 140

005

7.1 0.61

8548

7.1

242

06.2

87.0

With the growth of WOPC, China’s WCT also

increases gradually. By using Formula 1, the AAWO

from 2010 to 2019 was calculated, and the data shows

that the index increases year by year. Then, we can

see from Figure 1 that the WCG between 2010 and

2019 was calculated by using Formula 2. In 2010 and

2019, China’s waste collection gaps were 187.9

million tons and 612.8 million tons, respectively, with

an increased rate of 144.9%. Similarly, Formula 3 can

calculate China’s waste HDCG in 2010 and 2019,

which were 56.0 tons/day and 147.2 tons/day,

respectively. They were presented in figure 2. In the

past ten years, the growth rate of HDCG was 162.8%.

Figure 1. Waste collection gap(WCG 104·tons).

Figure 2. Harmless disposal capacity gap (HDCG

tons/day).

The general prognostic model was used to

prognosticate the WCG and HDCG of domestic waste

by SPSS 21.0. The period from 2010 to 2019 is

regarded as ten single time units, represented by the

number “1-10”, and the next five years from 2020 are

regarded as the prognostication time units, which are

represented by the number “11-15”. The gaps

between waste collection and waste harmless disposal

capacity are on the rise through the observation

model. It can be seen from figure 3 and figure 4 that

by 2024, the gaps between waste collection and waste

harmless disposal capacity in China will be 823.7

million tons and 196.2 tons/day, respectively.

Figure 3. Prognostic of waste collection gap(104·tons).

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258

Figure 4. Prognostic of waste harmless disposal capacity

gap(tons/day).

4 DISCUSSION

This study found that the more developed the city is,

the more waste is produced. Previous studies have

shown that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and

Shenzhen are first-tier cities with tight working

schedules. With the increase of per capita GDP, the

consumption demand of residents is greatly

stimulated. With the rapid popularization of

takeaways, fast food, and online shopping, plastic

waste, meal waste, and packaging waste increase

significantly. Especially in today’s increasingly

popular online shopping advocated by Chinese

people, the domestic waste generated by extravagant

packaging increases at an alarming rate.

For example, despite a small-sized product, it is

put in an elegant package, often a medium-sized

carton box full of bubble wraps and airbags. The

improvement of per capita GDP leads to the change

of living standards and consumption structure,

affecting domestic waste production. In 2019,

China’s population reached 1.4 billion, with the per

capita GDP of RMB71,000 and the WOPC 600 kg.

However, China’s large population, online shopping,

express delivery, takeout, and other service industries

may produce more waste than other countries, and the

decision coefficient of waste may even exceed 0.086.

In 2019, China’s AAWO was 854.9 million tons, but

the WCT was 242.1 million tons. In this case, the

amount of waste collection is far behind waste output,

increasing the WCG. At the same time, the HDC was

87.0 tons/day, but the HDCG was 147.2 tons/day. The

pollution is more serious in places where the amount

of domestic waste is large, and the growth rate of

WCG and HDCG are also faster. On the one hand,

because of the enhancement of consumption ability,

residents increase the output of personal waste, but

they do not have a strong sense of personal waste

management, which leads to the imbalance of waste

generation and transportation at the individual level,

resulting in the increase of WCG. On the other, many

cities in China do not have a standardized domestic

waste disposal industry chain. Due to the lack of

adequate final-phase disposal and utilization in the

whole process of waste disposal, only simple landfill

cannot genuinely achieve harmless disposal or the

growth rate of waste disposal stations are not enough,

which leads to a higher growth rate of domestic

waste, resulting in the increase of HDCG. Waste

disposal is not only a criticism of the traditional single

economic index pursuit model, but also a concrete

practice of China’s proposed goal of curbing the

aggravation of environmental pollution, which will be

conducive to searching for countermeasures.

Therefore, based on the above situation, which is

more likely to expand the WCG and HDCG. We can

see that the WCG and HDCG are still growing in the

next five years through the prognostic model, the

growth rate of WCG and HDCG will be 34.42% and

33.29%, respectively from 2020-2024. According to

the general prognostic model for data

prognostication, the short-term effect is still

reasonable, but with the extension of time, the

prognostication error may be significant, so this study

only prognosticates the next five-year period.

Nonetheless, we can still conclude that there are still

many disadvantages in China’s waste collection and

disposal industry chains. In the future, with the

growth of population and the improvement of per

capita income, the WCG and HDCG may be further

expanded.

5 CONCLUSION

The coordinated development of waste disposal and

economic development has become an important

economic and social problem that has aroused

widespread concern. The output and growth rate of

domestic waste in China are growing rapidly in recent

years. The growth of domestic waste in China is

closely related to the increase of per capita GDP.

Furthermore, as domestic waste collection and

harmless disposal capacity cannot catch up with

output of domestic waste, resulting in the growth of

WCG and HDCG. Although China’s per capita GDP

level has increased in recent years, in the long run, the

output of large amount of waste stimulated by GDP

growth has not only increased the gap of waste

management, but also hindered the sustainable

development of the ecological environment.

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259

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Funding, this work is supported by the National

Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant

(No. 71964020)

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