The policy-making trend analysis of municipal solid waste in China 1980-2015

Quantitative evaluation of the medicine innovation policy in China: based on the PMC-Index model

Introduction

Medicine innovation is crucial in promoting the sustainable development of medicine undertakings, which has significant economic and social benefits. China is the main force in global medicine consumption, with a huge demand for innovative medicines. Thus, the Chinese government releases a series of policies aimed at providing scientific and reasonable guidance for medicine innovation. However, there is inadequate quantitative evaluation and comparison of various medicine innovation policies in the existing studies.

Methods

This paper adopts the approach of text mining and the Policy Modeling Consistency Index (PMC-Index) model to construct an evaluation system and then quantitatively evaluates and compares the traditional Chinese medicine innovation policies (TCMIPs), the biological medicine innovation policies (BMIPs), and the multiple medicine innovation policies (MMIPs) in China.

Results

The results indicate that: (1) The three types of drug innovation policies have similarities in content and goal through comparative analysis of high-frequency words, while they also have their own characteristics. (2) The average PMC-Index of 29 TCMIPs is 5.77, which has the highest policy bad rate (21%); the average PMC-Index of 12 BMIPs is 6.21, which has the highest policy good rate (92%); moreover, the average PMC-Index of 35 MMIPs is 6.06, which has the highest policy excellence rate (26%). (3) The BMIPs, MMIPs, and TCMIPs have similar scores on policy object, policy orientation, policy timeliness, policy evaluation, and policy accessibility, while they differ significantly mainly on policy nature, incentive method, policy function, policy issuing agency, and policy instrument.

Discussion

This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of medicine innovation policies in China, in order to provide theoretical support for future policy formulation and optimization in the medicine industry. Moreover, we expand the application scenarios of policy diffusion theory.

Why does frugality influence the recycling intention of waste materials?

Waste recycling significantly impacts the sustainable development of society and the ecological environment, contributing to a vital role within the waste management hierarchy. This paper presents a research model that investigates the influence mechanism of consumers' frugality on their recycling intentions. This study collected 420 valid samples to test the model with regression analysis. The empirical results show that consumers' frugality exerts a direct and positive effect on their recycling intention. Except for the positive direct effect, perceived value mediates the relationship between frugality and recycling intention. Besides, environmental concern strengthens the positive relationship between frugality and recycling intention. The findings of this study can better explain the recycling intention, thereby providing a basis for the government and enterprises to formulate policies and measures to promote recycling behavior.

Determinants of Satisfaction with Solid Waste Management Services: A Central-Local Comparison in China

The Chinese central government proclaimed a mandatory or demonstration waste separation policy in some cities or counties to manage the increasing amounts of generated waste since 2017. Many cities and regions have also begun to build waste separation management systems and institutions, and community managers have created waste management rules and provided separation management services under the guidance of local government. However, little is known about how these policies or services have performed and the degree of residents’ satisfaction, especially regarding the central government. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the consequence of these policies using residents’ community and national satisfaction levels with solid waste management services (SWMS) and their determinants. An online survey in 2021 showed that the overall satisfaction levels of communities and national SWMS are similar, but the differences between rural and urban regions are significant. Residents’ satisfaction with community SWMS in urban regions was higher than national satisfaction, and the results in rural regions was contrary. The determinants of community and national satisfaction were also different and varied by region. To improve satisfaction, the government need to standardize basic management systems in different types of regions, gradually improve management services and institutions in rural areas and non-pilot cities and provide special services or facilities for less healthy residents.

An effective system for recovering recyclable waste from households in China: Ant Recovery's bottom-up scheme in Changchun city

In light of China's rising environmental governance focus on household waste recycling, this article analyses a novel recyclable waste recovery scheme, Ant Recovery, in Changchun, Jilin Province. In contrast to other recyclable waste collection systems, Ant Recovery emerged as a bottom-up venture established by members of the informal recycling sector in cooperation with the local recycling association. To assess the scheme's performance, the analysis uses field research data obtained over 21 days of observatory and questionnaire surveys at one of Ant Recovery's mobile collection points. Based on data from 1,501 documented recyclable waste transactions, the analysis indicates a median recovery rate of 438.4 kg/hour at the surveyed recovery station. Extended to the entire scheme's network in Changchun, the figure extrapolates to 2,034.6 metric tons/day, which approximates to roughly 94% of waste recyclables generated by the city's households. These achievements essentially result from two factors: (1) A beneficial policy environment established by central and local regulations and (2) AR's operational compatibility with daily routines and profit orientation of waste recyclable delivering stakeholders. In comparison to many other recycling systems in China, the alternative model in Changchun appears to be indigenous with little requirement for novel organisational structures or high capital/ overhead costs.

Optimization of a Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem for Sustainable Municipal Solid Waste Collection Management Using the PSO-TS Algorithm

Sustainable management of municipal solid waste (MSW) collection has been of increasing concern in terms of its economic, environmental, and social impacts in recent years. Current literature frequently studies economic and environmental dimensions, but rarely focuses on social aspects, let alone an analysis of the combination of the three abovementioned aspects. This paper considers the three benefits simultaneously, aiming at facilitating decision-making for a comprehensive solution to the capacitated vehicle routing problem in the MSW collection system, where the number and location of vehicles, depots, and disposal facilities are predetermined beforehand. Besides the traditional concerns of economic costs, this paper considers environmental issues correlated to the carbon emissions generated from burning fossil fuels, and evaluates social benefits by penalty costs which are derived from imbalanced trip assignments for disposal facilities. Then, the optimization model is proposed to minimize system costs composed of fixed costs of vehicles, fuel consumption costs, carbon emissions costs, and penalty costs. Two meta-heuristic algorithms, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and tabu search (TS), are adopted for a two-phase algorithm to obtain an efficient solution for the proposed model. A balanced solution is acquired and the results suggest a compromise between economic, environmental, and social benefits.