Socio-spatial and economic relationships of municipal solid waste recycling under China's socio-economic transition: The case of Wuhan.

摘要

In examining waste recovery in developing countries, the dual economy models of development, and Marx's political economy are mostly applied to explaining the phenomenon of scavenging as the pre-capitalist mode of production, and researchers are much more interested in viewing scavengers/junk-buyers as a special social group who are at the bottom of urban society rather than locating them in the chain of recycling, including waste source, collection system and end-user. Considering social and economic transition in China from Mao's classical socialism to a market-oriented country, however, this dissertation research places recycling into a broader context of urbanization, and shows that recycling in China is related to political economy, culture, environmental externalities, and urban expansion in population and land. In post-Mao's China, a private waste management system consisting of an army of rural migrants has become a primary means of waste recovery, although there is little official recognition. Besides paying attention to the role of space in the modes of production of waste recovery, through empirical data gathered from a questionnaire, field mapping and official sources in central China's biggest city, Wuhan, the research examines in detail the linkages within the hierarchy of the recycling system, and particularly the operation of junk-buyers between waste sources and redemption depots, and of redemption depots between junk-buyers and end-users. While the urban fringe is socially created as a marginal space for rural temporary migrants in China, redemption depots are dependent upon the society of junk-buyers as a condition for their existence. Of the recycling chain, it is illustrated that recycling can neither occur without a market for recovered materials nor without sufficient incentives for the public to separate recyclables at waste sources. Consequently, this research contributes a new understanding of recycling as an integrated system in a society. Meanwhile, given plentiful local labor resources and examples of costly collection of waste in developed countries, a series of approaches have been discussed to integrate the existing recycling system into municipal solid waste management at the local level in China.