The waste treatment and recycling efficiency of industrial waste processing based on two-stage data envelopment analysis with undesirable inputs

Abstract

Abstract Achieving a resource-conserving and environment friendly supply chain while pursuing economic development has always been the goal of countries across the world. As an emerging industrial nation, China is battling serious environmental problems. While there have been efforts to address waste processing, researchers are now interested in gauging the efficiency of waste treatment policies. We built a two-stage data envelopment analysis model with undesirable input to assess the efficiency of recycle treating and industrial waste reuse, including wastewater, waste gas and solid wastes in China. Our model is based on a circular economy structure that proposed by Environmental Protection Institute of China. The proposed method can serve as evaluation tool for the government policy in China as well as other emerging economy. We collected the data during the critical environmental policy enforcement period: the 11th five-year plan (from 2006 to 2010). We also analyze the waste treatment efficacy for the solid waste in the 11th and 12th five-year plan period (from 2011 to 2015). In contrast to earlier studies that have mainly focused on pollution disposal efficiency, this work takes both pollution and resource attributes of waste into consideration. The results revealed that integrated efficiency of industrial waste processing system was stable over five years. It also showed that efficiency at the pollution disposal stage was higher than that at the resources reuse stage, and contributed more to overall efficiency. We also find that the efficiency of the pollution and disposal of the solid waste improved during the 11th and 12th five-year plan. Further, the study reveal that the pollution disposal stage shows a similar trend as the integrated system, while the resources reuse stage does not. Finally, it also displays that there are three efficient development modes, namely, balanced, ecosystem, and coordinate development modes. In discussion, we provide benchmarks from developed countries for different development mode. We also point out other emerging countries that can benefit from our research by identifying their development mode and formulating their environmental policy based on these benchmarks in the future.