Abstract
China’s economy in recent decades has developed at a very rapid speed, as evidenced by its GDP jumping to second place in the world. Although utilization of domestic water resources has helped spur economic development, sewage discharge as an undesirable output has unfortunately caused many negative effects on human health, causing concern from all walks of life. Therefore, governments in China at all levels are committed to urban sewage treatment policies in order to reduce the negative impact of water pollution on society. While most existing studies have targeted the macro-level modes of economic development and environmental pollution, their selection of research objects is too narrow by failing to adequately consider China’s water pollution and the consequential national health crisis. This study takes cities in 30 provinces of China as the research objects and applies various influencing factors of urban wastewater treatment and health (as two stages) to the modified two-stage dynamic Slacks-Based Measures (SBM) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. The results reveal that the overall efficiency of each province is increasing and that the efficiency of the wastewater treatment stage is greater, thus contributing to overall efficiency. Conversely, the health stage’s efficiency is far lower than the wastewater treatment stage’s efficiency, which has a notably adverse effect on overall efficiency. In addition, most input-output variables need much improvement. Based on the findings herein, we offer specific suggestions to each province for improving sewage treatment capacity, the level of medical care, and the quality of national health.
Highlights
China’s economy has developed very rapidly to become the second largest one in the world ever since it opened itself up and initiated widespread reforms
The results demonstrated that most of China’s provinces and regions overuse water in industrial production, and that output-oriented technological advances exacerbate the discharge of water pollutants which affect the green and sustainable development of the economy prior to the implementation of the 11th Five-year Plan (2006–2010)
Linge et al (2012) [12] used datasets of 375 chemicals measured in reverse osmosis (RO) treated by WW, finding that dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in RO osmosis was between 3.7 and 10.7 mu g/L, attributable to at least one detected chemical, most of which was due to chemicals detected in less than 25% of samples
Summary
China’s economy has developed very rapidly to become the second largest one in the world ever since it opened itself up and initiated widespread reforms. Wastewater treatment efficiency, completed investments into wastewater treatment projects, and sewage treatment plants are the input variables, while municipal sewage treatment capacity is the desirable output variable, and total wastewater discharge, chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration, and heavy metal pollutants’ equivalent concentration are undesirable output variables. On this basis, we can measure the efficiency of health in the second stage. Two-stage efficiency, each component’s efficiency of 30 provinces in China, and combining them with China’s specific national conditions and regional economic differences such as human geography, we are able to observe the variables’ volatility, analyze the input-output efficiency values in greater detail, and put forward corresponding proposals to the provinces, which should provide a scientific basis for urban sewage treatment in the country
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