Abstract
The massive production and accumulation of industrial solid waste (ISW) have led to environmental pollution and natural resource underutilization. China’s efforts to build trial industrial waste resource utilization centers provide strong support for sustainable development. However, these centers and the factors driving ISW utilization have yet to be evaluated. This paper utilizes context-dependent data envelopment analysis models without explicit inputs (DEA-WEI) to evaluate the overall utilization performance of 48 industrial waste resource utilization centers in China from 2018 to 2020. It also builds a Tobit model to assess which indicators and waste types affect overall ISW utilization. The results show overall ISW utilization performance of centers in the sample has improved, with the average value falling from 1.7193 in 2018 to 1.5624 in 2020. However, there are clear regional performance gaps, with East China having the highest utilization performance (1.3113) while the Southwest had the lowest (2.2958). Finally, this paper proposes measures to improve the overall utilization of industrial waste resources based on an analysis of the factors driving solid waste utilization.
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The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This work is supported by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 9212005), Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of Ministry of Education of China (No. 19YJC630047), and Scientific Research Plan of Beijing Municipal Education Commission (No. SM202011232004).
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All authors have read and agree to the published version of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Conceptualization of ideas, research objectives, and objectives were proposed by Wang Ning. The methodology was developed or designed by Chuanyin Guo. Investigation and data curation were performed by Zhanqiang Guo and Junxia Liu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Xuexin Chai and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Reviewing and editing were performed by Ning Wang and Jian Zhang. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Wang, N., Chai, X., Guo, Z. et al. Hierarchy performance assessment of industrial solid waste utilization — tracking resource recycling and utilization centers in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 83330–83340 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-27909-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-27909-y