A COMPARISON OF WASTE MANAGEMENT IN GUANGZHOU AND HONG-KONG

In urban mainland China, safe disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) averaged at < 2%. While China is struggling to meet the lower order ne eds in waste management, namely, providing adequate waste collection s ervice, ensuring enough up to standard waste disposal facilities and i mproving waste transfer network, the waste generation rates in major C hinese cities are increasing. Guangzhou is a typical example. From 199 5 onwards, the daily MSW generation rate per capita in Guangzhou excee ds that of Hong Kong. While the per capita waste generation rate of th e latter has been stablized at similar to 1 kg per capita per day. Bas ed on the waste management experience of Hong Kong, a number of waste management problems in Guangzhou in the near future are perceivable. I n this paper, these problems are discussed and analyzed after a compar ison of the waste management systems and MSW composition of the two mo st developed cities in China. The major concern is that an improvement in the efficiency and hygiene performance of MSW collection shall not be realized at the expense of the local informal waste recovery syste m. Both higher and lower order waste management needs should be tackle d at the same time in order to avoid the later impasse. It can also be seen from the comparison that the mainland Chinese waste management s ystem has its special features. These features should be borne in mind when interpreting waste statistics from the Chinese sources. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.