Earth Engineering Center, Department of Chemical Engineering, City College of New York, CUNY, New York, NY 10031, United States.
Earth Engineering Center, Department of Chemical Engineering, City College of New York, CUNY, New York, NY 10031, United States.
Waste Manag. 2018 Jul;77:147-155. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2018.05.003. Epub 2018 May 26.
Analysis of data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on municipal solid waste (MSW) generation rates correlated to personal consumption expenditure (PCE) uncovers a decoupling event occurring between 1997 and 2000. A comparison of waste generation rates for each material category found in MSW reveals that plastics increased by nearly 84 times from 1960 to 2013 while total MSW increased only 2.9 times. The increase in plastic waste generation coincides with a decrease in glass and metal found in the MSW stream. In addition, calculating the material substitution rates for glass, metal and other materials with plastics in packaging and containers demonstrates an overall reduction by weight and by volume in MSW generation of approximately 58% over the same time period. A quantitative calculation of a scenario where plastics were not used in packaging and containers to replace glass, metal, and other materials demonstrates that MSW generation rate rises equally with PCE. Therefore, this study has determined that the increase of plastic use is a contributing factor to the decoupling of MSW generation from PCE.
对美国环境保护署（EPA）关于城市固体废物（MSW）产生率与个人消费支出（PCE）相关数据的分析揭示了 1997 年至 2000 年间发生的脱钩事件。对 MSW 中发现的每个物质类别废物产生率的比较表明，塑料从 1960 年到 2013 年增长了近 84 倍，而 MSW 总量仅增长了 2.9 倍。塑料废物产生的增加与 MSW 中玻璃和金属的减少同时发生。此外，计算包装和容器中玻璃、金属和其他材料与塑料的材料替代率表明，在同一时期，MSW 生成的重量和体积总体减少了约 58%。对一个没有使用塑料替代玻璃、金属和其他材料进行包装和容器的情景进行定量计算表明，MSW 生成率与 PCE 呈同等上升趋势。因此，本研究确定塑料使用的增加是 MSW 产生与 PCE 脱钩的一个促成因素。
