Search

Although sanitary household waste disposal was achieved in China, an efficient source separation system has not been built yet. The Unit Pricing System has been proved effective for household waste sorting by developed countries and regions, while rare developing countries have successfully introduced the system in their local context. The study, taking an interactive perspective of dominant factors of residents' waste sorting and governments' intervention, combines theoretical analysis with system simulation to dissect the evolution process of residents' waste sorting and local governments' Unit Pricing System policy making, and to provide a Unit Pricing System policy making tool to support policy implementations. The results suggest introducing a Unit Pricing System can significantly push ahead the household waste sorting behaviour for cities with relatively low initial status of environmental awareness, and immediately trigger sorting behaviours for cities with higher initial status of environmental awareness. The study can also benefit other developing countries when imposing waste sorting management instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plantation forests play an important role in global carbon cycle. However, life cycle analysis on carbon budget of plantation forests was still poorly documented, especially regarding how forest management influence its carbon dynamics. Therefore, this study aims to bridge this gaps, taking Larix principis-rupprechtii plantation forest in North China for example. Based on established tree growth models and carbon stock models, we firstly discussed carbon dynamics of living trees; besides, carbon budgets of forest litter and soil were estimated by balancing its carbon inputs and carbon emissions (using the YASSO model). Forest management (including seedlings, site preparation and logging) can lead to carbon emissions due to material and energy consumption. Our findings were as follows: carbon sequestration by plantation forest amounted to 164.56 t C/ha during one 41-year rotation period in our study, most of which flowed into forest litter and soil. During one whole rotation period, forest litter and soil released out 100.21 tC/ha of sequestered carbon, while forest management resulted in about 1.59 tC/ha of carbon emissions. With forest plantation renewal, forest carbon storage increased due to more carbon stored in forest litter and soil, mainly existing in humus 1 and humus 2. Considering forest natural carbon dynamics, plantation forest functioned as the “carbon sink” during the first 5 rotation periods in our study, but the net carbon sink decreased from 35.95 tC/ha to 0.98 tC/ha. The increase of temperature and precipitation could result in more carbon emissions, and forest ecosystem carbon budget was more sensitive to precipitation changes than that to temperature changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological footprint (EF) is an accepted worldwide method for the evaluation of environmental sustainability. However, its utility is limited by the existence of a series of shortcomings in the methodology such as the only-partial inclusion of human generated wastes. To improve the ability of the footprint method to evaluate environmental sustainability, a new footprint-based indicator – the ‘Waste Absorption Footprint’ (WAF) – has been proposed. The purpose of this paper is to test this methodological approach by evaluating the sustainability of the water environment in the Taihu Lake Basin, in densely populated eastern China. Applying the WAF method indicates that anthropogenic discharges of wastes have imposed an absorption pressure on the local water system such that the local water environment is increasingly unsustainable . Furthermore, nitrogen and phosphorus are identified as more critical wastes than organic substances, while domestic discharges are shown to be more important sources compared with those from industry and agriculture, which therefore should be the focus of environmental management and pollution control initiatives. It is demonstrated that the WAF method can provide a wealth of information that can be used for reference by local water environmental management authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]