Using weighted entropy to measure the recyclability of municipal solid waste in China: Exploring the geographical disparity for circular economy

Abstract

Solid waste recycling in developing countries has been largely relying on the informal recycling sector which intelligently uses the tacit knowledge within the hierarchical network of labor division to capture the value from the geographically uneven distribution of waste generation and demands on secondary materials. Previous studies on solid waste recycling mainly have a material-centric view on economic value. In this paper, an entropy-weighted recyclability index (EWRI) is developed to quantify the recyclability of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in China at the prefectural city level by integrating the road transportation density and regional recycling capability into the categories of waste physical components regarding the cost to deliver the waste from generating sources to the conversion sites for recycling. The result confirms the existence of an east-west gradient regional disparity in recyclability of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) among cities for the recyclable components. The 339 prefectural cities were classified into 4 grades, namely “best, good, normal, and difficult” for the recyclability of local MSW with guidelines for planning of regional recycling infrastructure, respectively. In conclusion, general guidelines for the building of wise-waste city infrastructure to fit the local context in developing countries is advised.