Management of Rural Domestic Waste Based on Investigations of Informal Waste Recycling: A Case Study of Guangdong Province

By means of questionnaire and face-to-face interview, investigations were made of the status quo of informal waste recycling in 91 towns and villages under 10 municipals in Guangdong in an attempt to formulate proper strategies for management of rural domestic waste (RDW) by sort at source in China. Results show that most of the towns and villages had started the practice of unified retrieval and transportation of RDW, however, the management was still quite low in de-hazardization level. The informal recycling sector was small in scale, but more than 70% of the interviewees had been in this business for over five years, showing that the informal sector was quite stable in Guangdong Province. Based on the behavioral investigations of the informal sector about mode, scope and tool collection and storage, a recycling model was worked out in summarization. As the prices for recyclable waste varied from region to region, and kept falling, making the profit of the business meager, which may pose a great impact on stability and chronicity of the informal recycling sector and eventually lower the recycling rate of RDW. Three specific scenarios were designed in the study on willingness of the waste recycling dealers to participate in the program of by-sort collection, and only 72.4%, 56.3% and 51.3%, of the dealers responded positively, respectively. It is, therefore, necessary to pay more attention to the characteristics of the recycling business and dealers, and appropriate preferential policies and/or economic subsidies could be adopted so as to boost their working enthusiasm.