Assessment of factors influencing the performance of solid waste recycling programs

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Abstract

Municipal solid waste management (SWM) problems present a serious challenge to local government authorities (LGAs) in developing countries. The effective way to reduce this tremendous issue is to integreate waste recycling systems into existing and future SWM. Understanding factors influencing recycling performance is the key to achieving sustainable waste management. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the performance of SWM relating to solid waste recycling covering a total of 120 solid waste recycling programs located in different urban areas of Thailand. The indicators involving efficiency, effectiveness and service ratio were used for the assessment of recycling performance using statistical analysis methods. Influencing factors encompassing technical, economic and financial, and institutional aspects were identified for three types of recycling programs (school garbage bank, community garbage bank, and composting facility). The results suggest that common significant factors are perception of administrator awareness of SWM problems, and source separation. In terms of school garbage banks, the provision of monetary incentive including interest and compensatory goods for recycling members, transportation cost, and low investment costs significantly affect the performance. Provision of loans, managing the program as a cooperative organization, and provision of door-to-door service correlate with better performance by community garbage banks. For composting facilities, provision of free organic waste bins and cooperation with NGOs correlate with a higher rate of waste diversion. The findings also propose implications for enhancing the performance of recycling systems through a number of measures including provision of monetary incentive, tax incentives, subsidizations, information dissemination, awareness campaigns, training, technical assistance, staff exchanges, and networking with voluntary organizations—which should be formulated with respect to building capacity of development partners, responding to poor recycling performance, and focusing on significant influencing factors.

Introduction

With rapidly growing rates of waste generation, depletion of landfill space, and problems in obtaining new disposal sites causing most sites to become open dumps which are nearly exhausted, improving solid waste recycling performance must be recognized as requiring more than simply enhancing the efficiency of SWM relating to waste disposal facilities (Nitivattananon and Gauger, 2004). These problems would urge the LGAs, which are the centers of SWM systems, to assess the most efficient alternatives by way of changing the traditional to more sustainable approaches to SWM.

In this regard, recycling is widely accepted as a sustainable municipal SWM method which is attractive for LGAs because of its potential to reduce disposal costs and waste transport costs, and to prolong the life spans of sanitary landfill sites (Folz, 1991, Muttamara et al., 1994). To realize the potential benefits of waste recycling, and organizing and managing recycling programs, local governments need to consider appropriate options for recycling programs with regard to financial-economic constraints; the existing situation; regulation; and institutional, environment, socio-cultural, and technical issues. The most important factor among these is how local governments have improved their recycling performance by learning from the successes of other LGAs. This question must be raised when making a sound decision in the planning stage to ensure that the recycling programs are sustainable over a long period.

There have been many studies attempting to determine how to make recycling programs successful in order to promote a more sustainable approach towards SWM. These studies can be reviewed for such factors as public understanding’s effect on recycling performance (Thomas, 2001), a comparison of tools for behavioural change aimed to increase participation in recycling collection and reducing contamination (Timlett and Williams, 2008), the evaluation of the public’s perception of a local authority recycling scheme (Williams and Kelly, 2003), or strategy planning for drop-off centers (Chang and Wei, 1999). Several authors have highlighted the economic, political, and social conditions necessary for recycling success and investigated the determinant factors of households’ participation, and the attitudes of people in recycling programs (Ball and Lawson, 1989, Martin et al., 2006, Mcdonald and Oates, 2003, Perrin and Barton, 2001, Tonglet et al., 2004). These previous studies have focused much on identifying the factors that affect recycling participation and the waste stream diversion success of curbside, buyback and drop-off recycling programs. However, the success of recycling will depend not only on participation levels in recycling programs (participation rate) or the effectiveness of the programs (diversion rate), but also on the efficiency of such a program (e.g. benefit to cost ratio or net cost per ton). The knowledge gap in the current literature of solid waste recycling is the lack of overall investigation and analysis of recycling systems at the local levels, covered by efficiency, effectiveness, and service ratio performance success indicators. Also, there is insufficient focus on developing management measures that respond to the gap in involving development partners, building capacity, and responding to key significant influential factors, which may lead to selection of inappropriate recycling technology in terms of local conditions, and financial and human resources capabilities.

The objectives of this study are to investigate existing recycling practices, assess recycling performance, and determine factors that distinguish higher levels of performance in a number of areas with 100 school garbage banks, 10 community garbage banks, 8 composting facilities, and 2 material recovery facilities. Topics covered include an overview of the current status of waste recycling practices in Thailand, followed by a set of recycling performance indicators, the results of recycling performance assessment, and a set of factors influencing recycling performance. A set of management measures and recommendations to enhance the performance of solid waste recycling systems is also discussed and proposed.

Section snippets

Existing recycling practices

Solid waste recycling practices in Thailand are mainly dominated by the informal sector. Only 11 percent of waste generated is being recycled. Municipal areas on average recycle 16 percent of their waste while non-municipal areas recycle between 5 and 8 percent (World Bank, 2003). Most of the present legislation has dealt with the general tidiness of refuse in the city areas; there is no legislation relating to the recycling process (Muttamara et al., 1994). Positive signs of recycling

Selection of study areas

The recycling programs were selected using information and feedback from newspapers, mass media, experts’ advice, and official documents. The selection of study areas is based on (i) the existence of recycling programs in five different regions of Thailand, in order to obtain a representative sample of the implemented recycling programs, (ii) various development partners such as NGOs, the private sector, or LGAs involved in such recycling programs, (iii) categorization into different school

Recycling performance indicators

A number of scholars have offered specific descriptions of performance indicators for the various recycling programs (Table 5). They were evaluated using criteria for judging appropriateness and utility which have been documented by USAID (1996) in relation to:

  • Direct (C1): the indicator selected should measure as closely as possible the result it is intended to measure;

  • Objective (C2): an objective indicator has no ambiguity about what is being measured; this should be simple, easy to interpret,

Use of results for enhancing waste recycling systems

The development of measures needs to be focused on a set of management objectives (Leitmann, 1999). These include (i) involving development partners; (ii) building SWM capacity related to waste recycling systems; (iii) improving recycling performance; and (iv) focusing on management measures which have significant influence. Management measures can then be selected that confront underlying causes of low performance of the waste recycling programs while achieving the objectives.

This study uses

Conclusions and recommendations

Most ongoing efforts on SWM recycling in Thailand have focused on encouraging communities in terms of garbage banks of both the CGB and SGB types, although some LGAs have also established small scale CFs and MRFs. The results of the assessment, through efficiency, effectiveness, and service ratio performance indicators, have shown that, for the SGBs, recycling rate and diversion rate were at a fair level, while the recycling performance of CGBs was poor in terms of participation rate, and the

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Kasetsart University’s Chalermphrakiat Sakonnakhon Province Campus, and the Cooperative Research Network (CRN) program, Commission on Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Thailand, for their financial support. We would like also to thank all key informants and 120 recycling program coordinators for providing the valuable recycling information.

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