Method development and empirical research in examining the construction of China's "Zero-waste Cities"

At the current stage, >100 cities in China are in the process of constructing "Zero-waste Cities" (ZCs). However, the absence of a unified quantitative evaluation method hinders the real-time display, assessment, and analysis of the progress and effectiveness of construction in various cities. Based on China's "Zero-waste City" (ZC) construction index system, a five-dimensional evaluation approach of transforming the city's construction index system into an evaluation index system is proposed, and an evaluation method for examining the construction of China's ZCs is developed. Meanwhile, the obstacle analysis model is employed to identify ZC's advantages and weaknesses. Following this evaluation framework, empirical research was conducted on Shenzhen. Results showed: 1) Shenzhen's ZC scoring result increased significantly from 58.9 to 108.3 by implementing the pilot project; 2) The dimensions of Management Measure, Support Capacity, and City Characteristic had achieved or approached full scores, but the dimension of Management Level still need improvement. 3) While industrial waste management reached an excellent level and agricultural waste proved manageable, domestic waste landfill and construction waste disposal still existed challenges. This method takes into account the uniformity of evaluation methods in nationwide and the diversity of solid waste environmental issues in cities. It can achieve a quantitative assessment of the ZC construction level for all cities in China, and providing a scientific basis for the horizontal comparison of the construction effectiveness of each city.