Municipal solid waste management in Shanghai

The daily municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Shanghai amounts to 9,808 tones in 1994, and all MSW is disposed in three sanitary landfill sites at present. Now the government has an ambitious plan to achieve the following goals: (1)To expand the recycle activities as extensively as possible; (2) To incinerate all the combustible MSW and recycle residue, with electric energy recovering; (3) To only landfill the incombustible MSW and incineration residue. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the present MSW management system and the government's plans of Shanghai, and to predict the pattern of the MSW's characteristics and generation, and subsequently to make some useful suggestion for MSW management. Also, the generation, collection, transferring and transportation, storage, processing, recycling and safe disposal in Shanghai are studied. The important factors affecting the MSW management plans are discussed. The practical aspects associated with MSW management system, such as organizational structure, financing, operations, personnel, investment budgeting are described.