Studies on the evaluation of municipal waste management systems

The municipal waste disposal system is at a turning point now, because full -scale efforts are demanded to approach the goal of 'the construction of a waste-recycling society'. An attempt was made to evaluate municipal solid w aste management systems with easier indexes in the model area. This study i ncludes two evaluation systems. One evaluation system (case 1) is based on the analysis of waste management costs. Different waste disposal systems ca n be easily evaluated by comparing the waste disposal costs associated with them. However, it seems risky to rate cities only by the results of an ana lysis of the waste disposal cost data, since the municipalities build, acqu ire or expand facilities independently from one another. The associated cos ts are not summed in a uniform way by all municipalities and for other reas ons. The other evaluation system (case 2) is based on the 'amenity and comf ort ranking of cities' (Keizai 1998). Judgment by one evaluation index alon e for a waste disposal system seems risky since the data in that case are i nsufficient for proper evaluation of a city. Hence, it is desirable to use two or more indices representative of a future ideal system. The results of the study demonstrated that Toyo Keizai's method of 'amenity and comfort r anking of cities' is better than the method of comparing solid waste manage ment costs.