Abstract
Faced with an unprecedented increase in the amount of solid waste, China aims to tighten its waste management regulation. Corresponding local policy experiments are encouraged. This study explores China’s authoritarian environmentalism through an examination of local legislations on Household Solid Waste (HSW) sorting. We present a full picture of relevant local legislation from five key dimensions: local legislative outputs, local standards of HSW classifications, reward and penalty provisions, the use of the social credit system and duties imposed on local governments. We then compare policy-making models based on the experience of Shanghai and Guangzhou. We find China’s HSW sorting policy has been dominated by the central state. The local lawmaking process is generally non-transparent and non-participative. When attempting to mobilize the public, local policymakers emphasize educating the public about “how to” instead of “why to sort wastes”. Also, while the central waste management policies are generally undermined locally, some sub-national governments do demonstrate a strong commitment to push the national policy through. Multiple factors account for this pattern. Though civic engagement did emerge in certain localities where civil society was relatively active, authoritarian environmentalism will continue to prevail in China in the near future.
Highlights
From July 1, 2019, every morning before heading to work, Shanghai citizens greet each other with a seemingly provoking question: “What kind of waste are you?” This question is aimed at the city’s daily household solid waste that, according to a new local decree implemented on 1 July, must be sorted into one of four color-coded bins: dry, wet, recyclable and hazardous [1]
This study aims to assess the effects of authoritarian environmentalism through the lens of local legislations on Household Solid Waste (HSW) sorting in China
To assess the impacts of the existing local legislation, we examined the local standards of waste classification (2.2.2) and local legal instruments to promote waste sorting (including reward and penalty provisions (2.2.3); the use of social credit system (2.2.4); and duties imposed on local governments (2.2.5)), as reasonable classification standards and efficient policy instruments are essential to ensure effective local implementation of HSW sorting policy
Summary
From July 1, 2019, every morning before heading to work, Shanghai citizens greet each other with a seemingly provoking question: “What kind of waste are you?” This question is aimed at the city’s daily household solid waste (hereinafter, HSW) that, according to a new local decree implemented on 1 July, must be sorted into one of four color-coded bins: dry, wet, recyclable and hazardous [1]. This local decree, the Shanghai HSW Management Regulation enacted by Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, is reported to be the most stringent and complex waste segregation regulation in China. To combat the waste management challenge, it has been almost two decades since China initially launched its tentative
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