MUNICIPAL WASTE RECYCLING IN BRANDON, MANITOBA: DETERMINANTS OF PARTICIPATORY BEHAVIOUR

The municipal waste disposal crisis has received considerable public attention in recent years, particularly as it has become increasingly difficult, both financially and politically, to dispose of the steadily growing volume of waste. With municipalities under pressure to find acceptable alternatives to the traditional forms of refuse disposal - landfilling and incineration - the recycling of household waste has been advocated by policy makers and some environmentalists as a possible solution. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing the collection and disposal of household recyclables, as well as the effectiveness of institutional strategies to induce residents' participation in such a program. The study area is the city of Brandon, Manitoba, a settlement of some 40 000 people, 210 kilometres west of Winnipeg. To obtain a representative overview of the recycling behaviour of the population, three groups totalling a sample of 490 respondents, were investigated. Two of these groups were made up of people who actively recycle, and the third constituted a control group made up of those who do not engage in recycling activities. An overview of the municipal initiatives in Brandon, and an analysis of the data collected in the study, as well as statistics available on recycling programs from other sources, indicate that the recently introduced services and facilities have contributed to make significant qualitative changes but with limited success in dealing with the real magnitude of the solid waste problem. It is suggested that the goals of the various strategies have been established, but there is currently little incentive -apart from personal satisfaction - for residents to participate. This would seem to explain the limited success, in quantitative terms, of the programs to date     

Waste Political Settlements in Colombia and Chile: Power,Inequality and Informality in Recycling

There are stark differences between the waste recycling literature from the global North and that from the global South. The literature from the global North tends to focus on empirical analyses of existing municipal recycling services and rarely considers institutional factors. When it does, the theoretical approaches adopted are limited, especially regarding the role of informal institutions. In contrast, recycling literature from the global South does focus on informal institutions, but it does so by concentrating on the struggles of waste pickers rather than on the performance of waste management services provided by local authorities. This divergence in the literature suggests the need for an analytical framework that integrates institutions and recycling performance. This article analyses waste disposal regimes in two Latin American metropolitan areas, Medellín (Colombia) and Santiago (Chile), and explores the link between income inequality and recycling. It focuses on the political settlements that lie at the heart of the waste regimes. As such, waste regimes in these two cities are understood to be a product of the interplay of balances of power, institutions and distribution of benefits. The study also highlights the need to understand informal institutions as relational phenomena that affect both the rich and the poor, and not just as a subsistence strategy by the latter.     

The Waste Commons in an Emerging Resource Recovery Waste Regime: Contesting Property and Value in Melbourne's Hard Rubbish Collections

Practices of scavenging of Melbourne's hard rubbish collections are examined in the context of an emerging resource recovery waste regime linked with policy shifts that promote resource recovery over disposal through landfill. Waste regimes have many parallels with regimes in natural resource management and contestations over property are an important but neglected aspect. Based on research conducted primarily in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I argue that hard rubbish on the kerb‐side forms an informal ‘waste commons’ that facilitates various forms of revaluing of municipal household waste. Results of a survey conducted by householders scavenging of their own hard rubbish piles suggest that informal scavenging activities were more effective for diverting waste from landfill by recycling than the formal processes of council hard rubbish contractors. Interviews conducted with residents, waste management contractors and self identified ‘professional’ scavengers revealed different perspectives on the waste commons and highlighted the contested nature of property in hard rubbish. Together with the survey findings, they allow tentative conclusions to be drawn about the role of the waste commons in the transition from a regime of disposal through landfill to one focused on resource recovery.     

THE ISOTOPIC COMPOSITION OF TIN IN SOME ANCIENT METALS AND THE RECYCLING PROBLEM IN METAL PROVENANCING

A recent suggestion that some ancient metallurgical processes might give rise to large changes (> 0.5%) in the isotopic composition of tin gave hope that it might be possible to identify ancient bronze samples which had undergone recycling and mixing processes. This paper describes a method for the analysis of the isotopic composition of tin by thermal ionization mass spectrometry and applies it to analyse a number of ancient bronzes and tin metal objects from the Bronze Age Mediterranean. No observable isotopic fractionation of tin was found above $0.1% in the ratio¹²² Sn/¹¹⁶. Consequently, either recycling of bronze in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean was not so common as supposed, or the isotopic composition of tin is not fractionated by anthropogenic metallurgical processes to the extent predicted by the Bradford group.     

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “Southern” geographies of informal recyclers provide resources for interpreting this phenomenon but studies of a commodity frontier in urban waste have tended to focus on moments when informal waste workers are displaced by capital intensive waste management systems. I draw on concepts in world-ecology and materialist ecofeminism to explore the proliferation of informal waste workers in Barcelona and the way their (re)production produces “Metabolic Value”. Informal waste work is shown to emerge and persist as part of a commodity frontier process—where the appropriation of unpaid work from non-commodified spaces is the hallmark of how capitalism secures “Cheap Nature”. The study suggests that, rather than internalising ecological costs, recycling often rests on the appropriation of value from uncommodified spaces.     

Restoring the Shine to a Pearl: Recycling Behaviour in Penang,Malaysia

Despite serious waste management problems in Penang Island, a recycling campaign launched in 2001 has met with little success. This may be because the campaign was not backed up with knowledge about factors that motivate recycling. This article develops a simple economic framework to explain individual recycling behaviour. A logit model that utilizes survey data drawn from a sample of 760 respondents was used to test the insights gained from the framework. As predicted by the framework, recycling was negatively related to factors that increased the private costs of recycling, such as the lack of storage space and low income. Recycling increased among respondents who recognized its benefits: they include the environmentally conscious, those who were aware of the recycling campaign and respondents in the twenty‐five to thirty‐five year age category. Interestingly, neither gender nor distance to recycling centres were reliable predictors of recycling behaviour.     

固体废物处理与资源化技术的应用研究及发展综述

随着我国城市化进程的不断加快和市场经济的快速发展,固体废物的产生量随之不断增加。需研究和选择科学合理的处置技术.以解决当前城市固体废物污染环境问题。本文对我国固体废物分类管理现状进行分析,综述了固体废物资源化技术的应用。对我国固体废物的处理工艺具有重要意义。     

Creating authentic ‘glacial’ landforms from waste materials: Two UK case studies

This paper describes two case studies of hills of waste material in the UK that have been specifically conceived to replicate glacial landforms. In one case a spent oil‐shale tip ('bing') and municipal waste dump in West Lothian has been remodelled and restored in the form of a local glacial crag‐and‐tail. In the other, a municipal waste disposal landraise hill in Lancashire has been designed to resemble the local drumlins. An assessment of the geomorphological authenticity of the landforms is made and it is concluded that the involvement of glacial geomorphologists in such projects is important if convincing and authentic outcomes are to be achieved. Adherence to landscape principles and attention to detail can pay dividends in winning public support, in achieving cost savings, and in securing successful after‐uses.     

城市生态管治:城市化压力的政策响应

缺乏制衡的城市化行为对城市生态系统造成的压力不断增大,成为城市可持续发展的瓶颈。城市生态管治是将"管治"和"生态城市"的理念引入到城市研究中,运用P-S-R概念模型研究城市生态系统,通过分析城市化的生态压力,以及由此引起的生态系统的非健康状态,进而采取城市生态管治的政策响应,以形成反馈机制,缓解压力,使得城市生态系统产生新的输出,即良好健康状态的城市生态系统。城市生态管治政策响应体系包括政策一体化(核心),支撑能力建设和协调发展机制。     

Scale as an 'Active Progenitor' in the Metamorphosis of the Waste Management Hierarchy in Member States: The Case of the Republic of Ireland

In the light of the raft of legislation introduced by the European Commission since the late 1980s, waste management planning in the European Union (EU) is currently undergoing tumultuous restructuring. At the heart of this restructuring is the requirement by member states to formulate waste management plans that embrace the Commission's central concept of the waste management hierarchy. This article begins with the assertion that the grounding of the waste management hierarchy in different European countries reflects members' ongoing difficulties balancing supra-national environmental regulations with the imperatives of national accumulation strategies. Central to negotiating this tightrope has been a tremendous transformation, modification, re-jigging and re-calibration of the hierarchies of waste management planning institutions in member states. The core argument advanced in this article is that far from being a neutral or technical or practical side show, contemporary (re)scalings of waste management planning in Europe must be approached as being centrally implicated in the constitution of forms of environmental controls that serve rather than burden the interests of leading capitals. This argument is illustrated through a detailed case study of recent scalar inventions in waste management planning in the Republic of Ireland.     

循环经济思想与我国饭店能耗管理方式的转变

循环经济思想与饭店的能耗管理具有战略相融性。文章探讨了循环经济思想对我国饭店能耗管理的战略指导价值,分析了在这一思想指导下的饭店能耗管理范式以及运作原则。文章认为,在循环经济思想指导下的饭店能耗管理范式将在成长动力、竞争方式、污染治理方式和经营形态等四个方面发生改变。文章在指出传统饭店能耗管理方式的种种与循环经济思想背离的现象之后提出,饭店在能耗管理中贯彻循环经济思想应该注重从技术、管理和二者综合的方向上进行。     

Women's ecological oral histories of recycling and development in coastal Yucatán

This article addresses the formation of the Chen Kole ‘Lob women's recycling cooperative and its relationship to urbanization, plastics consumption, and the exclusionary spaces of conservation-as-development in coastal Yucatán, Mexico. Increasing amounts of plastic containers and other nonorganic garbage contaminate backyards, protected wetlands and marine areas, and individual homes located in low-lying floodable areas. However, in this region, the majority of sponsored economic development programs are directed at managing men's activities in sustainable fishing and ecotourism within natural protected areas. Both women's work and urban issues such as recycling and waste management have frequently been excluded from state policies and development practice. I draw from oral histories of women's experience in the home, in conservation space, and as participants in grassroots plastics recycling to underscore what motivated women to become involved in recycling and garbage cleanup, and how women came to be considered local professionals who maintain clean spaces. These histories underscore the links between gendered work, urban practices, and conservation-as-development, and how women's urban recycling work affects social differences and ecological decline within vulnerable coastal areas.     

Measuring Efficiency in Local Government: An Analysis of New South Wales Municipalities' Domestic Waste Management Function

Data envelopment analysis is used to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the domestic waste management function in 103 New South Wales local governments. After allowance is made for nondiscretionary environmental factors that may affect the provision of these local public services, such as congestion and the inability to operate machinery in densely populated urban areas, comparison of efficiency across geographic/demographic criteria is made. The results suggest that, on average, waste management inputs could be reduced to just over 65% of the current level based upon observable best-practice, while productivity losses due to scale effects account for slightly over 15% of total inputs. The results also indicate that inefficiency in urban developed councils is largely the result of congestion and other collection difficulties encountered in densely populated areas, while inefficiency in regional and rural councils stems from an inability to attain an optimal scale of operations.     

海洋规划的区域类型与特征研究

随着我国海洋经济规模的逐步扩大,迫切需要加强对海洋经济规划的研究,以利于加快海洋资源的开发利用,促进沿海地区经济合理布局和产业结构调整,努力促使海洋经济各产业形成国民经济新的增长点;同时也改变我国海洋规划理论研究严重滞后的实际。作者认为应该根据地理覆盖范围将海洋规划划分为国际综合性海洋计划、国家层面海洋规划、省(市)级海洋规划及地级市域海洋规划等四种区域类型。     

The Freshwater-Supply Problems of Mankind

Four Soviet hydrologists stress the usefulness of the water-balance principle in estimating the volume of water resources available to mankind. They carefully distinguish between the stable subsurface component of runoff, which has been mapped for the USSR at 1:5 million (and is now being mapped at 1:2.5 million) and the surface runoff, or flood, component. Measures are recommended to increase subsurface runoff at the expense of the surface component. These measures include autumn plowing to reduce sheetwash of snowmelt waters in spring, snowpack management in winter and windbreak planting. Other meliorative measures are irrigation and swamp drainage, both of which need to be placed on a more scientific basis with properly worked-out principles and norms. In discussing the world water-supply problem, the authors rule out recourse to new water sources, such as seawater desalination and glacier melting, and insist that mankind must preserve existing water resources by curbing the discharge of waste waters into natural bodies of water. The proposed recycling principles would increase consumptive use for water-supply needs, but would substantially reduce total withdrawals below the level that can be expected if present water-use practices continue to be followed.     

MAKING CHAINS THAT (UN)MAKE THINGS: WASTE–VALUE RELATIONS AND THE BANGLADESHI RUBBISH ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY

There is growing empirical and theoretical interest in post‐consumption activity that results in the capture and creation of value from waste in the global economy. This article engages with two dominant approaches to tracing the capture and creation of value, global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs), and their shared call to examine waste disposal and recycling. Using non‐participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and a survey we examine what happens to the products of one of GVCs ‘and GPNs’ paradigmatic industries, electronics, when they are labelled e‐waste and are imported into Dhaka, Bangladesh, as rubbish electronics. Rather than wasting and final disposal predominating, our research documents a substantial rubbish recovery economy that captures and creates value anew. Consequently, we argue that both GVC and GPN approaches must rethink how they theorize the capture and creation of value.     

Transnational Flows of E-Waste and Spatial Patterns of Recycling in China

Two geographers residing in Beijing discuss the inflows, processing, and consumption of electronic waste—a topic largely neglected in the current literature on globalization. Based on extensive interviews with electronics producers and recyclers in China, the paper explores the global flows of e-waste and concentration of related recycling in coastal China. The authors suggest that recycling activities (authorized as well as illegal) grew in tandem with the dramatic increase in electronics production during the last decade. They note that the country's recycling sector has played a significant role in rural industrialization and local economic development, albeit in conflict with the objectives of environmental protection. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F20, L63, O17, O19. 6 figures, 23 references.     

‘Lifescaping’ toxicants: Locating and living with e-waste in Tanzania

Based on fieldwork in an informal scrap recycling workshop, this article explores how unregulated electronic waste (e-waste) handling activities in Dar es Salaam expose workers to toxic substances as part of their livelihoods. These informal economic activities are situated in the urban landscape within the surrounding global flows of e-waste and recycling and demonstrate how workers reflect on and seek to mitigate the toxic exposures they encounter as part of daily life. The concept ‘lifescaping’ is used to show how, while informal workers may be aware of toxic exposures and make the best of tricky situations in various ways, they have limited access to information about the dangers and must develop their own strategies by performing various micro-actions through which they hope to protect themselves.     

Destination unknown: Rokkasho and the international future of nuclear reprocessing

The much discussed expansion of investment in nuclear power in response to global warming and energy scarcity depends on solutions being found to the management and disposal of spent reactor fuels. The reprocessing route, involving the separation from radioactive waste of plutonium and uranium and their subsequent recycling, has long been advocated. However, experience shows that it suffers from chronic problems of coordination, usually resulting in mismatches of supply and demand and large stockpiles of plutonium. Just as the UK is withdrawing, Japan is embarking on large-scale reprocessing with the opening of the facility at Rokkasho which seems destined to produce large surpluses of plutonium against a background of heightened concerns over nuclear proliferation. In the meantime, the Bush administration has ended the United States'blanket opposition to reprocessing and is proposing a controversial new discrimination between'fuel-cycle'and'non-fuel-cycle'states. Confusion reigns.     

旅游区规划的城市化问题及其对策研究

旅游区规划城市化问题是学术界一直以来讨论的热点和声讨的对象。本文首先认为当前不少旅游区规划存在城市化现象,存在破坏景观风貌、冲淡游览意境、丧失发展主题、违背人本主义原则和浪费开发资金等影响;其次,文章认为其根本原因是"技术主义"崇拜下"科学主义"泛滥所导致的"人文主义"的缺失,具体表现在技术运用、学科教育、管理体制、社会心理等方面;最后文章提出了系列对策措施,即强化人本-生态主义规划观,维护自然肌理的有机生长,实施规划决策制度化,构建两维规划运行模式,以人文主义提升规划技术,解决游与憩的冲突,完善旅游区规划评价指标体系,建立旅游区特色评估与预警机制等。