A study on household waste sorting governance mechanism in residential communities in Changsha, China

Abstract

In recent years, waste management has become one of the most urgent environmental problems in China. With the fast developing of urbanization in China, more and more cities fall into the "garbage dilemma". The national level began to pay attention to “green governance”, mainly involving the implementation of the waste sorting system. The residential community, as the main source of household waste, will be the key place for governance. Changsha, as one of the 46 cities implementing mandatory classification regulation, in 2020 published the Changsha Municipal Household Waste Management Regulations. However, due to insufficient cooperation among stakeholders, the low completion rate of residents' sorting behavior and unreasonable governance measures, this policy was not carried out smoothly. Also, most of the studies in China are mainly focused on macro policies, there are few comments on the governance of domestic waste in practice at the community and household level. This paper aims to summarize the current situation and problems of Changsha household waste sorting system from the perspective of different stakeholders by analyzing first-hand data from field investigation and sorting out typical cases at home and abroad, so as to explore the best approach to improve the efficiency of domestic waste classification management in residential communities. A total of 437 respondents participated in the questionnaire survey. According to the results, the majority of respondents are willing to participate in waste sorting publicly activities and to be charged with a reward-and-punishment system (with 87% and 79%). However, only 7% of the respondents believe that waste producers (respondents themselves) should be the responsible person. There is a contradiction between their intention and behavior. In addition to the weak awareness of residents, other stakeholders also lack cooperation in the process of implementation and management. Based on this, the reasons behind these problems were discussed, including lack of awareness, poor execution, lack of cooperation mechanism, etc. Finally, an ideal governance mechanism is summarized in order to guide managers to make reasonable choices. The relationship between garbage sorting management and community governance has been redefined. Through diversified co-governance mechanism, waste sorting can become the fulcrum of promoting social capital. It connects all stakeholders, thus help to construct an efficient and well-organized governance mechanism. Limitations of this project were also presented. In the future, expanding the research scope and introducing more stakeholders may increase the comprehensiveness and objectivity of the research results.