Key policies to the development of construction and demolition waste recycling industry in China

Abstract

There is a growing need to recycle construction and demolition waste (CDW) in order to treat the huge amount of CDW in many metropolises of China. However, the CDW recycling industry is still in its initial stage and developed unevenly across various areas of China. In spite of some qualitative discussions, the quantitative analysis of crucial policies to the development of CDW recycling industry was overlooked. Through literature review, nine influential policy instruments were identified in term of three categories, i.e. control and command policy, market-based policy and information-based policy. The stepwise regression analysis was employed to explore the relationships between the influential policies and the development level of CDW recycling industry in 52 sample Chinese cities. The results demonstrated that Green Product Label, Charge and Tax and Technical Standards had statistically significant association with the development of CDW recycling industry in sample cities. In the surveyed cities, Charge or Tax was the most common policy tool (84.6%), but Green Product Label (7.7%) and Technological standards (11.5%) were rather less frequently employed. According to the results, Green Product Label and Technical Standards should be given higher priority. In addition, landfill charge should be introduced as a fundamental impetus. These results provide directions for other cities to facilitate the development of their CDW recycling industry.

Keywords: China; Construction and demolition waste (CDW); Development level; Policy instruments; Recycling industry.