Papers Delivered at International Conference on Cleaner Production
Beijing, China -- September 2001 -- Paper 10 of 30

The Signpost to Cleaner Cities 
Research on application of cleaner production assessing indicator system in China

Deli, Xi ; Ruirui, Li
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (100084)

Abstract: It has become an urgent task to assess the execution of cleaner production in a city and compare with the similar cities. This article provides an insight of procedure, data gathering methods and indicator computing methods of applying the established indicator system assessing the cleaner production, also provides some applying cases. Presently “The Cleaner Production Law” is being drafted in China, this foreshows the coming tide of implementing cleaner production all through the country. Local governments will play dominant roles in the tide, including planning the layout, making the local policies, laws and management methods, and providing the support of training, information, technology and financing. It has become an urgent task to assess the execution of cleaner production in a city and to do the interurban comparison. As mentioned in the foregoing articles[1], after the frame of the indicator system assessing the cleaner production was introduced, we visited some cities, got some constructive advices from local authorities and officials, so we modified some details of previous scheme. This article will provide an insight of the applying procedure, data gathering methods and indicator computing methods of the established indicator system assessing the cleaner production, also provide some applying cases, in order to induce methodologically. The main bodies which carries out this assessment should be the cities themselves, the comparison between the cities should be completed by State Economic and Trade Commission of China or State Environmental Protection Administration of China, which leading the execution of cleaner production in the whole country, the comparison also can be consigned to special research institutions or consultative companies.

Procedure

This article is imitative of the procedure for assessing product life cycle stipulated in ISO14040, the procedure lengthways includes four steps. The first step is the analysis of the city’s general situation, in order to determine the type and characteristics of the city, which is the basis of assessment and comparison. The second step is gathering relative data, especially the list of “three costs” (energy cost, material cost and water cost) and “two discharges” (waste discharge and pollutant discharge). The third step is calculation, the indicators of cost and discharge, and their annual variation rate are calculated. The final step is assessing the level and advance of the execution of cleaner production in the city, and making some comparison between cities on the basis of the data gained above. After each step, there should be a simple discussion about the results, for instance, the same data gathered from different sources should be discussed and checked when making the analysis of data lists.

The analysis of the city’s general situation

There are 667 cities in China by 1999. These cities can be classified into different groups according to different criteria. For example, according to the administration ranks, all the cities can be classified into cities directly under the Central Government, vice-provincial cities, district cities, county cities. According to the population, they can be classified into:

According to geographic position, they can be classified into eastern cities, central cities and western cities. In addition, they also can be classified into littoral opening cities and special economic regions, or common cities and main cities. All the cities are different in industrial structures, economic development levels, material consumption and technological levels because of their difference in ranks, population, geographic position, history and other characteristics. Therefore, when assessing the execution of cleaner production and comparing between different cities, the comparability must be considered.

The analysis of the lists of waste and discharge

It is a heavy task to establish the lists of waste and discharge, especially the raw material statistics. According to the flow of material, category and weight of material should be considered first important. But according to the creation of fortune, the price of raw material and the total cost should be firstly considered. The categories of raw material are various, and different raw material has different price, and the price of raw material varies frequently. So it is much more difficult to investigate the material cost per GDP unit at the urban level than at the product or corporation level. For the cities with small area, the total freight amount can be calculated as the sum of raw material amount and product amount. Of course, besides the output products, some products are consumed locally, but this amount can not be deducted accurately.

In addition, we think that the toxic and harmful raw material should be listed and controlled for its high environmental risk, though it takes a little proportion in the total raw material amount. Therefore, it is necessary to instruct the corporations which purchase or use the toxic and harmful material to declare to local environmental protection departments, which are responsible for gathering and verifying the source, usage and disposition of the raw toxic and harmful raw materiel, and publicizing these results periodically. This task is being put into effect. We suggest, as the first step, the experience of U.S.A. be made as a reference, such as 17 kinds of toxic material listed in the 30/50 programs, it includes: benzene, cadmium and its compounds, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, chromium and its compounds, cyanogen and its compounds, plumbum and its compounds, hydrargyrum and its compounds, dichloromethane, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, nickel and its compounds, tetrachloroethylene, toluene, 1,1,1—trichloroethane, trichloroethylene, xylene and all its isomers.

We had imagined that most data could be gathered from the assessed cities. But actually this is unpractical. First, it will take a lot of money and time, especially when large amount of cities will be assessed. Second, the reliable and accurate data will be difficult to get for the extraneous experts. Therefore, we think that the relative statistical annals should be utilized as possible as we can, since the authority and comparability of the statistical annals is much more reliable than personal collection. It was found that most data could be looked up in “Urban Statistical Yearbook of China”[2] and “Environmental Yearbook of China”[3], other wanting data could be gathered from other sources.

The data that can be found in “Urban Statistical Yearbook of China” include:

Rank of the city, population, area, GDP, total industrial output value, industrial structure, all-year water supply, industrial discharged water, all-year electrical consumption, SO2 emission per square kilometer, total freight amount, familial gas consumption, familial liquefied petroleum gas consumption, etc.

The data that can be found in “Environmental Yearbook of China” include:

Fuel coal consumption and raw material coal consumption, fuel oil consumption, industrial boiler amount, industrial furnace amount, the total emission of industrial waste gas (including emission of fuel burning waste gas and emission of industrial production waste gas), industrial SO2 emission (including SO2 emission during fuel burning and SO2 emission during industrial production), industrial soot discharge and industrial soot removal, industrial dust discharge and industrial dust removal, total industrial water consumption (including fresh water consumption and recycled water consumption), total industrial waste water discharge, the treated industrial waste water amount, pollutants discharged from industrial waste water (including mercury, cadmium, chromium, lead, arsenic, volatile phenol, cyanide, COD, petroleum, SS, sulfide, etc.), industrial solid waste produced amount (including dangerous solid waste), industrial solid waste integrated utilized amount (including dangerous solid waste), industrial solid waste stored amount, industrial solid waste disposed amount (including dangerous solid waste), industrial solid waste discharged amount (including dangerous solid waste), annual investment of pollution treatment project, etc.

In the lists of waste and discharge, the wanting datum is integrated energy consumption, this have to be gained from local organs, this can also be calculated and checked using electrical consumption, fuel coal consumption, fuel oil consumption, industrial boiler amount and industrial furnace amount.

The investment and benefit list of cleaner production includes: input project, capital, output.

The activity and result list of cleaner production includes: the amount of relative meetings, the amount of propagandistic activities, the amount of cleaner production projects, the person-time amount of cleaner production training, the amount of paradigmatic cleaner production industries and corporations, the amount of products which own the environmental marks, the amount of checked cleaner production, the amount of corporations which passed ISO14000, the amount of cleaner production publications, etc.

The data gathered from Taiyuan and Jinan are illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1 The Data Gathered from Taiyuan and Jinan

The analysis of assessing indicators 

This is the third step, in this step some other assessing indicators such as indicators of discharged waste per 10,000 RMB yuan, annual variation rate will be calculated. The results are illustrated in Table 2.

Table 2 Cleaner Production Assessing Indicators

The analysis of urban assessment and interurban comparison

As the indicators mentioned above, we can get some information about material flow in the two cities, and get to know their advantages and disadvantages. If the indicators of several years were calculated, we would have demonstrated the annual variation trends. If compared with the average level of the whole country, the rank of the cities would have been determined. According to different indicators, we can do some interurban comparison. On the basis of the indicators gained from Taiyuan and Jinan, the two cities are similar in population, area, industrial structure, total freight amount etc., but they are quite different in GDP and indicators of waste and discharge per GDP, this indicates that there are much difference between central cities and eastern cities. The indicators calculated above is not complete, the data about toxic and harmful raw material and the investment benefit of cleaner production are absent. Here we can not give a complete case and result for the limit to length and space.

Recently, there are two trends in establishing the indicator system. One is to establish a bulky system including various indicators, such as the system established by Niu Wenyuan[4], which is composed of 5 systems, 16 models, 48 indicator groups and 208 items. The other trend is to minimize the system scale, using the indicators as few as possible to express the coral idea, for instance, the system put forward by World Bank in 1995[5], evaluates a county’s sustainability considering the actual savings rate after the exhaustion of natural resources and the damage of environmental pollution. This shows, whether the assessment can be implemented scientifically is determined not by the scale of the indicator system, but by the possibility of reflecting the actual situations. We believe that the ecological efficiency is the basis of the assessment of the cleaner production at urban level. The consumed resources and environmental load should be considered when creating the fortune. Thus, the indicators of waste and discharge per GDP and their annual variation rate are the coral indicators in our system, whereas the indicators describing the urban economic construction, municipal construction, environmental construction and the quality of urban environment and denizen living are not included in our indicator system. So it does, not only the scale of indicator system is minimized, but also the developing trends of some cities, which do not execute cleaner production on purpose, can also be demonstrated without much difficulty.

The urban nonmaterial development trend may be motivated by the change of industrial structure or the progress of science and technology, tail-end treatment can also reduce the environmental load. For assessing the effort of implementing urban cleaner production, the indicators such as the investment to cleaner production, output benefit and the rate of input and output and so on are also included in our indicator system, these indicators can reflect the double-winning characteristics of cleaner production.

If our assessing indicator system were legalized, we would request the reinforcement of some statistics, for instance, the statistics of toxic and harmful raw material, we would also suggest that some needed data be published in some relative statistical yearbooks, in order to ameliorate our assessing work step by step.

It is a deficiency that the urban layout is not mentioned in our assessing system. Presently quite a few cities are changing their layout, some polluting plants are moved out the central urban district, and the industrial park with centralized waste treatment are established. This action is important for changing the urban visage, meliorating the urban environment, improving the urban land-value and accelerating the economic development, it can also promote the popularization of cleaner production considerably.

References

1. Ruirui, Li; Deli, Xi, The Frame of urban cleaner production assessing indicator system, China Environment and Development International Corporation Committee, Cleaner Production Work Group, the Sixth Meeting (Zhuhai).

2. State Statistical Bureau, Urban Statistical Yearbook of China, China Statistical Press, Beijing

3. State Environmental Protection Administration of China, Environmental Yearbook of China, China Environmental Science Press, Beijing

4. Sustainable Development Research Group in China Academy of Sciences, 1999 China Sustainable Development Strategic Report, Science Press, Beijing

5. Work Group of Sustainable Development Indicator System, China Urban Environmental Sustainable Development Indicator System Research Handbook, China Environmental Science Press, Beijing, 1999