[2009.02.28] The waste industry 一片混乱

The waste industry
废弃物产业

A load of rubbish
一片混乱

Feb 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

What’s wrong with policies on waste, and how to get them right
废弃物产业政策如何修正？

AT POPE’S CREEK, on America’s Potomac river, there’s a pre-Columbian rubbish tip of oyster shells covering 30 acres, to an average depth of ten feet. Humanity has always produced waste in vast quantities; but more people, more consumption and the contribution emissions from rubbish make to climate change mean that disposing of the stuff is an increasingly contentious issue.

在波拖马可河上游,有一条POPE’S小溪。在哥伦布发现美洲大陆之前那里就有一处面积达30英亩，平均深10英尺的牡蛎壳的垃圾堆。人类总是大量产生废弃物。但是伴随着人口的增加消费必然增加，导致垃圾大量出现，而垃圾堆产生的气体又使得气候发生变化。气候变化是眼下的热门话题，因此垃圾的处理也就日益引起人们的关注。

People feel that they have a natural right to throw away as much stuff as they like, just as those lucky native Americans chucked the shells from their plentiful oyster piles over their shoulders. They shouldn’t. Rubbish damages the environment and is expensive to dispose of. With household waste, just as with toxic chemicals, governments need to persuade people that they should be responsible for the muck they produce.

人们认为想要仍多少废物就扔多少是他们天生的权利，就像当年那些幸运地捞获了大量牡蛎的土著美洲人一样，吃完一个牡蛎就能把壳随手往后一扔。但这种想法是错误的。垃圾损害环境，难于处理。对待生活垃圾就应该像对待有毒的化学废料一样，政府有责任规劝公众对自己产生的废弃物负责。

Trashy regulations
废弃物管理

Americans are the champions of trash: on average they jettison over 700kg each a year. But developing nations are catching up fast. By 2030, Indians will be producing twice as much as they are now; Chinese people three times as much.

美国人是世界上垃圾生产的冠军。平均每个美国人年产垃圾700公斤。但发展中国家正在迅速赶上来。到2030年，预计印度将比现在多产生一倍的垃圾；而中国的垃圾量将是现在的三倍。

Waste is also becoming more hazardous. Modern industry produces many things, from coal ash to computers, that are difficult to dispose of properly. The consequences can be grotesque: in the city of Dzerzhinsk, in Russia, decades of slapdash handling of chemical waste has reduced male life expectancy to just 42 years. Rotting waste, meanwhile, produces methane, one of the more potent greenhouse gases, and thus contributes to global warming.

废弃物的危害性也越来越大。现代工业产生了从煤灰到计算机等许多难于适当处理的废弃物。其危害结果难于预料。在俄罗斯的捷尔任斯克，数十年对化工废料的随意处理使得当地男性公民的预期寿命减至42岁。甲烷是一种危害很大的温室气体，垃圾在腐烂的过程中就产生甲烷。因此垃圾也是导致全球变暖的一个原因。

Yet as the special report on the waste business in this week’s issue argues, there are grounds for optimism amid the mounds of rubbish. Environmental concerns have spurred dramatic improvements in the way waste is managed in many countries. Recycling is becoming ever more common. Entrepreneurs are brimming with schemes to turn rubbish into electricity or fuel or fertiliser. Environmentalists dream of a world in which almost nothing is wasted.

然而正如本周出版的关于废品行业的特别报道中所言，尽管面对着堆积如山的垃圾，我们还是有足够的乐观理由。在许多国家人们对环境的关注已经促使废品的处理方式产生了极大的改进。循环利用的方式被普遍接受。企业家们的脑袋中装满了将垃圾转变成电、燃料或肥料的方案。环境保护者们甚至在想象一个循环利用、几乎没有废弃物的世界。

But it is governments that have the power to turn such visions into reality, and their policies are all over the place. In America, for example, landfills containing household rubbish are subject to stringent regulation, whereas ones filled with toxic sludge from power plants are less tightly controlled. In Britain landfills are taxed out of all proportion to the damage they do the environment. In poor countries many governments often ignore waste altogether. Only 6% of Madagascar’s rubbish is even collected.

但只有各国政府才有能力将这一美好的愿望化为现实。而目前各国对于垃圾处理的政策五花八门，大相径庭。例如在美国，生活垃圾的填埋受到了严格的监管，而对填埋电厂产生的有毒煤泥的控制却很松。在英国，填埋垃圾须纳税，而纳税的额度与垃圾对环境的危害完全不成比例。在许多穷国，政府对垃圾的排放完全听之任之。在马达加斯加只有6%的垃圾得到收集。

To clear up the mess, governments need to hold people and companies responsible for the waste they produce. One way of doing that is to work out the cost of disposal and charge firms and households for rubbish collection based on the volume they produce. That helps discourage people from chucking stuff out, and provides a revenue stream to dispose of it when they do. Another is to oblige manufacturers to take back and dispose of certain goods when consumers have finished with them. That gives firms an incentive to make their wares easy to recycle or re-use.

为更有效的减少垃圾排放，各国政府必须使个人与企业对他们各自产生的废弃物承担责任。一种可行的方式就是计算出垃圾的处理费用，然后按照排放量对家庭和企业收费。这有助于使人们养成不随意丢弃物品的习惯，并且为处理垃圾提供了一个源源不断的资金渠道。另一种方式就是对某些商品实行强迫回收制。当消费者用完这些商品后，原制造商必须回收处理这些产品。这样做可以促使企业开发易于回收循环或再利用的产品。

As consumers, people hate paying for rubbish disposal. But as voters, they claim to worry about the state of the planet. Such measures are the price of cleaning it up.

作为消费者，人们自然不愿为垃圾处理埋单。但作为公民，人人都会认为目前的状况堪忧，不能听任去地球堆满了垃圾。采取上述措施是使地球保持清洁必须付出的代价。

译者：dqzxf http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=17460&extra=page%3D1