Landfills serve as a primary disposal method for municipal solid waste in China, with over 20,000 operational sites nationwide; however, long-term operations risk leachate leakage and groundwater contamination. Amid intensifying climate change and human activities, understanding contaminant evolution mechanisms in landfills has become critically urgent. Focusing on a representative plain-based landfill in North China, this study integrated field investigations and groundwater monitoring to establish a monthly coupled groundwater flow–solute transport model (using MODFLOW and MT3DMS codes) based on site-specific hydrogeological boundaries and multi-year monitoring data, analyzing spatiotemporal plume evolution under the coupled impacts of precipitation variability (climate change) and intensive groundwater extraction (human activities), spanning the historical period (2021–2024) and future projections (2025–2040). Historical simulations demonstrated robust model performance with satisfactory calibration against observed water levels and chloride concentrations, revealing that the current contamination plume exhibits a distinct distribution beneath the site. Future projections indicate nonlinear concentration increases: in the plume core zone, concentrations rise with precipitation, whereas at the advancing front, concentrations escalate with extraction intensity. Spatially, high-risk zones (>200 mg/L) emerge earlier under wetter conditions—under the baseline scenario (S0), such zones form by 2033 and exceed site boundaries by 2037. Plume expansion scales positively with extraction intensity, reaching its maximum advancement and coverage under the high-extraction scenario. These findings demonstrate dual drivers—precipitation accelerates contaminant accumulation through enhanced leaching, while groundwater extraction promotes plume expansion via heightened hydraulic gradients. This work elucidates coupled climate–human activity impacts on landfill contamination mechanisms, proposing a transferable numerical modeling framework that provides a quantitative scientific basis for post-closure supervision, risk assessment, and regional groundwater protection strategies, thereby aligning with China’s Standard for Pollution Control on the Landfill Site of Municipal Solid Waste and the Zero-Waste City initiative.

Disposal of municipal solid waste incineration fly ash through synergistic in-plant dechlorination and sintering.

Construction of a new emergency management system for potentially viral/viral municipal solid waste in China: Based on the "Beam-Column Structure" framework model

With the continuous increase of the total amount of municipal solid waste in China, waste management has become an urgent matter. To address this challenge, the Chinese government recently launched a new waste management system. Previous studies have confirmed the effectiveness of incorporating intrinsic motivation factor into the theory of planned behavior for predicting green behavior, however, the interaction between variables in the model has not been fully explored in the Chinese context. Therefore, this study extended the theory of planned behavior with moral norms to evaluate the household waste management behavior of Beijing residents. With 342 residents as samples, hierarchical multiple regression was used for analysis. The empirical result showed that all determinants in the extended model positively predict behaviors. Moral norms were the most important determinants of behavior, followed by subjective norms, and then perceived behavioral control and attitude. In addition, moral norms played a mediating role in the influence of attitudes and subjective norms on behavior. These findings will help expand and improve understanding of the key factors affecting residential waste management, make reasonable recommendations for environmental protection and sustainable development.

What establishes citizens' household intention and behavior regarding municipal solid waste separation? A case study in Jiangsu province

Microbial diversity and potential health risks of household municipal solid waste in China: A case study in winter during outbreak of COVID-19

Metagenomics insights into the effect of co-landfill of incineration fly ash and refuse for bacterial community succession and metabolism pathway of VFAs production

Understanding the temporal and spatial characteristics of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from municipal solid waste (MSW) and a quantitative evaluation of the contribution rate of the factors influencing the changes in CO2 emissions are important for pollution and emission reduction and the realization of the "double carbon" goal. This study analyzed the spatial and temporal evolution of waste generation and treatment based on panel data from 31 Chinese provinces over the past 15years and then applied the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) model to study the driving factors of CO2 emissions from MSW. China's MSW production and CO2 emissions displayed a rising trend, and the overall CO2 emissions showed a geographical pattern of being high in the east and low in the west. Carbon emission intensity, economic output, urbanization level, and population size were positive factors that increased CO2 emissions. The most important factors driving CO2 emissions were carbon emission intensity and economic output, with cumulative contribution rates of 55.29% and 47.91%, respectively. Solid waste emission intensity was a negative factor in reducing CO2 emissions, with a cumulative contribution rate of -24.52%. These results have important implications for the design of policies to reduce CO2 emissions from MSW.

Changes and Future Issues in Policies for the Classification of Municipal Solid Waste in China

The biodegradation behavior of municipal solid waste (MSW) depends on the diversity and metabolic function of bacterial communities, which are affected by environmental factors. However, the diversity of the bacterial communities and metabolic functions in MSW, as well as their influencing factors, remain unclear. In deep-aged MSW, the abovementioned deficiencies are more significant, and will effectively hamper landfill disposal. In this study, high-throughput sequencing was performed to examine the bacterial community structure and metabolic function from depths of 10 m to 40 m, of two large MSW landfills on the southeast coast of China. Thermotogota (1.6–32.0%), Firmicutes (44.2–77.1%), and Bacteroidota (4.0–34.3%) were the three dominant phyla among the 39 bacterial phyla identified in aged MSW samples. Bacterial genera associated with the degradation of many macromolecules, e.g., Defluviitoga, Hydrogenispora, and Lentimicrobium were abundantly detected in MSW samples, even in aged MSW. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that bacterial diversity in the landfills was most strongly correlated with electrical conductivity, age, and moisture content of the MSW. Tax4fun2 analysis predicted that there were abundant metabolism functions in aged MSW, especially functional enzymes (e.g., glycine dehydrogenase and cellulase) related to amino acids and cellulose degradation. This study increases our understanding of the bacterial diversity and functional characteristics in landfilled MSW.

A large pool of ammonia in mature leachate is challenging to treat with a membrane bioreactor system to meet the discharge Standard for Pollution Control on the Landfill Site of Municipal Solid Waste in China (GB 16889-2008) without external carbon source addition. In this study, an engineering leachate treatment project with a scale of 2,000 m3/d was operated to evaluate the ammonia heat extraction system (AHES), which contains preheat, decomposition, steam-stripping, ammonia recovery, and centrifuge dewatering. The operation results showed that NH3-N concentrations of raw leachate and treated effluent from an ammonia heat extraction system (AHES) were 1,305-2,485 mg/L and 207-541 mg/L, respectively. The ratio of COD/NH3-N increased from 1.40-1.84 to 7.69-28.00. Nitrogen was recovered in the form of NH4HCO3 by the ammonia recovery tower with the introduction of CO2, wherein the mature leachate can offer 37% CO2 consumption. The unit consumptions of steam and power were 8.0% and 2.66 kWh/m3 respectively, and the total operation cost of AHES was 2.06 USD per cubic metre of leachate. These results confirm that heat extraction is an efficient and cost-effective technology for the recovery of nitrogen resource from mature leachate.

With the development of urbanization in China, tons of municipal solid waste have been produced and disposed Incineration is the best way to deal with municipal solid waste in China but this practice often is opposed and resisted by the public who live nearby. This study systematically analyzed the risk responses of the public, in particular factors affecting the public’s resistant behavior We conducted a survey and collected 376 valid questionnaires which we used for the analysis. We used the structural equation model and path analysis for the examination, and the results showed that risk perception was a critical factor predicting the resistant behavior of the public surrounding the wasteto-energy (WTE) plant. Benefit perception had a negative, but insignificant, impact on the public’s resistant behavior. We found a negative correlation between benefit perception and risk perception but the relationship was weakened when we added systematic processing to the path analysis. The impact of system processing on risk perception was greater than that of benefit perception; that is, systematic processing was better in explaining the risk judgment of the public than benefit perception. Problem knowledge was a significant indicator in predicting risk perception and systematic processing and technology knowledge was a significant indicator in predicting risk perception and benefit perception. Systematic processing increased the public’s risk judgment to the WTE plant. Finally, we discussed practical implications and limitations.

Technologies for municipal solid waste management: Current status, challenges, and future perspectives

Development of renewable energy is important to modern society because climate change induced from fossil use has resulted in severe and possibly irreversible environmental impacts such as sea level rise, desertification, diminished land productivity, and increased possibility of extreme events. Therefore, the utilization of renewable and clean energy not only increases regional energy security but also alleviate the environmental risk. In this study, we employ the lifecycle assessment to examine the electricity generation from the use of municipal solid waste in China, and then investigate the emission reduction from this application. Different supply patterns of the wastes are also compared to make the results more robust. The results show that if recycled wastes are fully utilized, approximately 11,107 GWh can be generated, along with a profit of $1.2 billion from energy sales. In this case, the CO2 emission will reduce by 9.7 million metric tons. If the food waste is used in compositing and animal feed, the net power generation and emission reduction are about 8,216 GWh and 7.32 million metric tons, respectively. If additional 30% of recycled wastes are assumed to be utilized in their past use, the power generation, profit, and emission reduction will further decrease to 5,750 GWh, $697 million, and 5.12 metric tons, respectively. The results point out that the utilization of recycled wastes can effectively reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, improve energy security, and increase social welfare. Insights of the results and policy implications are also discussed in detail.

The output of municipal solid waste is growing rapidly, which has brought tremendous pressure to urban development. The supply chain of municipal solid waste (MSW) in China mainly contains three processes: collection, transportation, and disposal. The waste is sorted at the collection and disposed of according to the classification. However, it is mixed at the transportation stage. Mixed transportation remixes the separately collected waste, which seriously affects the disposal effect. The supply chain of MSW urgently needs to be redesigned to improve the MSW disposal effect. First of all, on the ground of the waste treatment situation, we redesigned the supply chain of MSW in China. Secondly, combined with the redesign of the MSW supply chain, this paper established the function allocation model for collection stations, making a collection station only gather one type of waste, and built the transportation path planning model for vehicles, reducing the impact of waste storage on residents. Finally, based on the data of Xuanwu District in Beijing, the supply chain redesigning practical example of incinerable waste was given. The supply chain redesigning model in this paper not only makes full use of the existing infrastructure but also improves the disposal effect of waste. The supply chain redesigning model has practical application value.

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

Sanitary landfills have advantages in low investment, large treatment volume, and strong adaptability, which is now the main treatment for municipal solid waste in China. However, flow slides, which present serious threat to the safety of lives and properties, are prone to occur in Chinese landfill due to leachate mound. To achieve maximum reduction in disaster loss induced by flow slides at landfills, we preliminarily explored simulation-based hazard management of a constructed landfill for flow slides scenario. A well-calibrated in-house numerical method of smoothed particle hydrodynamics was employed to conduct hazard management of flow slides. The flow slide scenario at the landfill was firstly assessed by selecting velocity and runout of flow slides to quantify the hazard. Then, different control measures, including initiative and passive prevention and control measures, were evaluated based on the achievement of hazard assessment. The proposed frame of simulation-based hazard management of flow slides can be applied to constructed or planned landfills, which can mitigate or even prevent similar disasters.

Physical composition of municipal solid waste (PCMSW) is the fundamental parameter in domestic waste management; however, high fidelity, wide coverage, upscaling, and year continuous data sets of PCMSW in China are insufficient. A traceable and predictable methodology for estimating PCMSW in China is established for the first time by analyzing 503 PCMSW data sets of 135 prefecture-level cities in China. A hyperspherical transformation method was used to eliminate the constant sum constraint in statistically analyzing PCMSW data. Moreover, a back-propagation (BP) neural network methodology was applied to establish quantitative models between city-level PCMSW and its socio-economic factors, including city size, per capita gross regional product, geographical location, gas coverage rate, and year. Results show that (1) national-level PCMSW in 2017 was estimated as organic fraction (53.7%), ash and stone (8.3%), paper (16.9%), plastic and rubber (13.6%), textile (2.3%), wood (2.2%), metal (0.6%), glass (1.5%), and others (1.0%); (2) organic fraction, paper, and plastics showed an increasing trend from 1990 to 2017, while ash and stone decreased significantly; (3) organic fractions in East, North, and Central-South China were higher than those in other regions. This enables us to fill the data gap in the practice of municipal solid waste management in China.

By incineration treatment became the most important g municipal solid waste disposal method. The bottom ash, which accounting for 20% to 30% of the original municipal solid waste has been a large content source of municipal solid waste in China. The heavy metal will be released to the environment by the eluent produced from the bottom ash. It has a negative influence on bottom ash treatment and reuse. This study analyzed the changing of heavy metals of Cu, Ni and Zn during the elution process by the column simulation experiment. The study revealed the regulation of heavy metals migration under the condition of slow speed elution. These results can help environmental release risk assessment of heavy metal in bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration plant.

Municipal SolidWaste (MSW) management in China has been transitioning from a mixed collection and treatment system to a separated collection and treatment system. The continuous rise of MSW treatment capacity and the optimization of technology structure provided basic facility support for China to promote MSW separation at source. China preferred a four-type separation system. Regulated recycling should be enhanced to improve the efficiency and sustainability of recycling industry. As food waste is the main composition of MSW in China, 20%–30% of the food waste diversion and land application could maximize the comprehensive environmental performance. Incineration is to be the pillar technology in MSW separated treatment system in China.