Waste Management & Research: The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy

After the landfill site is sealed, the uneven settlement is related to the safety of reutilisation of the site, and it is critical to calculate the uneven settlement of the site without error. In this article, the soil parameter of garbage body was changed with biodegradation. Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua in three dimensions (FLAC 3D) numerical simulation was applied to the settlement of the landfill site closure. In calculating the settlement of landfill, the soil parameters of landfill with age were obtained by field drilling experiments. The parameters can reflect the characteristics of soil organic matter in different biodegradation stages. Finally, the uneven settlement within 20 years of the closure period was obtained by the numerical simulation taking Jinzhou Nanshan landfill as an example. The results show that the settlement with the age increases gradually, but the rate will be more and more moderate, and the maximum subsidence value in the sealing field after 20 years will be 9.11 m, 15.71% of the maximum elevation. Around the landfill slope position of uneven settlement rate is bigger, and the maximum angle of uneven settlement is up to 45°. But the middle position is small, which is close to 0°.

The increase in landfill temperature often results in shear strength reduction of both the solid waste and the liner, which leads to slope instability. However, very few landfill slope analysis methods can simultaneously consider the effect of temperature on the shear strength of the waste solid and the liner. In this study, based on the strength parameters of the liner and waste with temperature, a wedge method for translational failure analysis of landfills considering temperature increase was established. The results showed that rising temperatures caused by biochemical degradation at the bottom and middle of the landfill reduced the anti-slide force of back slope more than that of bottom slope. With the leachate level increasing, the effect of temperature rise on landfill stability became obvious. The feasibility of the proposed wedge method was verified by the engineering case study of Xiaping Landfill, Shenzhen, China. This study probably provides important guidance for the design, operation and management of municipal solid waste landfills.

Waste sorting is an important aspect of environmental protection, which is now being enforced on a large scale in China. More broadly, it is beneficial to improve the implementation strategies for waste sorting policy and programmes. This study analyses the psychology of consumers that influences the mechanisms of consumer waste sorting and the governmental policies influencing consumers’ attitudes and behaviours. About 295 validated participants were collected from four regions of China. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationship among consumers’ internal motivation, government’s external publicity and consumer behaviour, and the Hayes’ PROCESS macro was used to test mediating effect and moderating effect. The results show that consumers’ internal motivation and government’s external publicity have a positive effect on consumer behaviour. Consumer attitude played a complete mediating role between consumers’ internal motivation and consumer behaviour. Between the government’s external publicity and consumer behaviour, consumer attitude played a complementary mediating role. Consumers with self-transcendence values, positive motivation of waste sorting and the government’s external publicity had a greater positive impact on their attitudes than consumers with self-enhancement values. The greater the material benefits and psychic income consumers received from waste sorting, the more it promoted a positive attitude to consumer behaviour. The article puts forward some management suggestions to improve the government’s implementation of its waste sorting policy.

The use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has grown in recent years, making them a promising source of secondary raw materials due to their rich composition of valuable materials, such as Cobalt and Nickel. Recycling LIBs can help reduce fossil energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, environmental pollution, and consumption of valuable materials with limited supplies. On the other hand, the hazards associated with spent LIBs recycling are mainly due to fires and explosions caused by unwanted short-circuiting. The high voltage and reactive components of end-of-life LIBs pose safety hazards during mechanical processing and crushing stages, as well as during storage and transportation. Electrochemical discharge using salt solutions is a simple, quick, and inexpensive way to eliminate such hazards. In this paper, three different salts (NaCl, Na₂S, and MgSO₄) from 12% to 20% concentration are investigated as possible candidates. The effectiveness of discharge was shown to be a function of molarity rather than ionic strength of the solution. Experiments also showed that the use of ultrasonic waves can dramatically improve the discharge process and reduce the required time more than 10-fold. This means that the drainage time was reduced from nearly 1 day to under 100 minutes. Finally, a practical setup in which the tips of the batteries are directly immersed inside the salt solution is proposed. This creative configuration can fully discharge the batteries in less than 5 minutes. Due to the fast discharge rates in this configuration, sedimentation and corrosion are also almost entirely avoided.

During last decade, design for deconstruction (DfD) has attracted the attention of researchers and project managers as an environmentally friendly alternative to the conventional demolition of buildings. Yet, the intensity of raw materials consumption, waste generation and greenhouse gas (GhG) emission in the construction industry proves that current methods of selecting building components have failed to make the deconstruction effectively feasible. Specifically, in the material selection process, most research studies concentrate on assessing environmental and economic aspects while in selecting material for DfD various factors must be considered. To overcome this gap, this study aims to propose a DfD-based material selection model which enables designers to choose materials that make the recyclability and reusability of building components feasible. To this end, the Kano model is first applied to categorize selection criteria identified via a questionnaire. After extracting the weights of criteria by using Fuzzy-Analytical Hierarchy Process, a Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution-based multi-criteria decision-making framework is proposed for choosing the best possible alternatives. Based on the research results, the framework enables designers to find decent materials in terms of DfD requirements. A numerical example is also provided to examine the proposed framework for selecting the most appropriate materials for walls.

Most of the energy consumed worldwide comes from non-renewable sources, such as oil derivatives, making it necessary to search for renewable, clean energy sources, with emphasis on biomass from agricultural and industrial waste. Coconut shell pellets (CSPs) and cashew nut shell pellets (CNSPs) were manufactured and subsequently subjected to chemical, thermal and exhaust gas analyses of their combustion. Mean temperature results in the combustion area were 366.44 ± 84.79°C (CSPs) and 295.00 ± 89.47°C (CNSPs). The exhaust gas combustion values were 19.43 ± 0.57% (CSPs) and 18.75 ± 0.77% (CNSPs) of O₂, 2348 ± 1241 ppm (CSPs) and 2901 ± 499 ppm (CNSPs) of CO, 14.92 ± 5.06 ppm (CSPs) and 39.83 ± 10.91 ppm (CNSPs) of NO_x, and 441.25 ± 130.41 ppm (CSPs) and 2841.50 ± 765.26 ppm (CNSPs) of CH₄. In conclusion, the combustion process of CSPs proved to be less polluting and more energy efficient when compared with CNSPs. The analyses of the exhaust gases from the combustion of these biomasses can serve as a basis for the creation of safety parameters and public policies to regulate the use of biomass for energy purposes.

Waste management is a key challenge the world currently faces. Solid waste imports (SWIs) are counteractive to the construction of ecological civilization. The comprehensive prohibition of “foreign waste” (FW) imports (FWIs) is an iconic measure to promote ecological civilization and ecological environment safety. Strengthening the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s supervision of SWI (SSWIs) is an important means of implementing the comprehensive prohibition of FWIs, while existing research has paid little attention to the behaviour of SSWIs. This paper firstly analyses the influential factors of the behaviour of SSWIs based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), and five corresponding research hypotheses are put forward accordingly. Then, it uses 262 micro questionnaires regarding the behaviour of SSWIs in the Port of Waigaoqiao in Shanghai, PRC, and constructs a structural equation model based on the TPB to identify the influential factors and effects of the behaviour of SSWIs. Some interesting findings are observed in this research. Firstly, it indicates that attitude, subjective norms (SNs) and perceived behavioural control (PBC), all indirectly act upon supervision behaviour by influencing supervision intention. Secondly, PBC acts directly on the behaviour of SSWIs, which is consistent with the TPB. Thirdly, the direct effects on supervision intention from strongest to weakest are SNs, attitude, and PBC, respectively. The conclusion provides important policy enlightenment for the supervision optimization of the behaviour of SSWIs. The supervision intention can be motivated from various angles by strengthening the attitude, SNs and PBC of customs supervisors, subsequently strengthening their supervision intention and behaviour.

With the increase in the number of patients and activity of hospitals, the issue of hospital waste management (HWM) is becoming more and more challenging and worrying. In addition to financial losses, there will be irreparable damage to the ecosystem and environment which will create many problems for people (because the job of some people in the area is livestock and agriculture and they have a lot to do with their surroundings). It also doubles the need to pay attention to the issue of sustainable development (simultaneous attention to social, economic and environmental dimensions) in waste management. Moreover, the climatic and geographical conditions and lack of proper waste management in this area lead to major problems. Therefore, in this research, by developing a novel multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model, HWM is addressed in the hospitals of Sari, Iran. The aim is to design an HWM network considering sustainability, resiliency and uncertainty. In order to deal with uncertainty, a robust fuzzy programming approach is employed, and then an improved goal programming technique and Lp-metric method is proposed to solve the model. It was revealed that goal programming outperforms the Lp-metric method in terms of all objectives. Furthermore, the obtained results demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed methodology to design an efficient sustainable HWM network.

Today, reverse logistics (RL) is one of the main activities of supply chain management that covers all physical activities associated with return products (such as collection, recovery, recycling and destruction). In this regard, the designing and proper implementation of RL, in addition to increasing the level of customer satisfaction, reduces inventory and transportation costs. In this paper, in order to minimize the costs associated with fixed costs, material flow costs, and the costs of building potential centres, a complex integer linear programming model for an integrated direct logistics and RL network design is presented. Due to the outbreak of the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) at the beginning of 2020 and the consequent increase in medical waste, the need for an inverse logistics system to manage waste is strongly felt. Also, due to the worldwide vaccination in the near future, this waste will increase even more and careful management must be done in this regard. For this purpose, the proposed RL model in the field of COVID-19 waste management and especially vaccine waste has been designed. The network consists of three parts – factory, consumers’ and recycling centres – each of which has different sub-parts. Finally, the proposed model is solved using the cuckoo optimization algorithm, which is one of the newest and most powerful meta-heuristic algorithms, and the computational results are presented along with its sensitivity analysis.

Considering the widespread transmission of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) globally, India is also facing the same crisis. As India already has inadequate waste treatment facilities, and the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has led to significant growth of Bio-medical waste (BMW), consequently safe disposal of a large quantity of waste has become a more serious concern. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of BMW of India before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this article highlights the gaps in the implementation of BMW rules in India. This study uses various government and non-government organizations, reports and data specifically from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The finding of the study demonstrated that most of the States/Union Territories (UTs) of India are lacking in terms of COVID-19 waste management. India has generated over 32,996 mt of COVID-19 waste between June and December 2020. During this period, Maharashtra (789.99 mt/month) is highest average generator of COVID-19 waste, followed by Kerala (459.86 mt/month), Gujarat (434.87 mt/month), Tamil Nadu (427.23 mt/month), Uttar Pradesh (371.39 mt/month), Delhi (358.83 mt/month) and West Bengal (303.15 mt/month), and others respectively. We draw attention to the fact that many gaps were identified with compliance of BMW management rules. For example, out of all 35 States/UTs, health care facilitates (HCFs), only eight states received authorization as per BMW management rules. Moreover, the government strictly restricted the practice of deep burials; however, 23 States/UTs are still using the deep burial methods for BMW disposal. The present research suggests that those States/UTs generated on an average of 100 mt/month COVID-19 waste in the last 7 months (June–December 2020) should be considered as a high priority state. These states need special attention to implement BMW rules and should upgrade their BMW treatment capacity.