Motivations of the PhD research

In literature, reverse logistics has been extensively and predominately focused from the perspective of the economic dimension of sustainable development through the recovery of resources and re-creation of value from

15 EOL and EOU products. Nevertheless, holding in mind, one should never overestimate the economic benefits from the recovery of EOL and EOU products while underestimate the possibility of negative influences on the environment and threats to people’s health from the improper reverse logistics activities.

Manual disassembly Circuit board baking

Gravitational plastic separation Smoke from acid bath hut Figure 1-10 WEEE recycling in Guiyu, China (Huo et al., 2007).

Previous investigations have revealed many of such instances among which the recycling of WEEE in Asia is one of the most extensively focused cases (Huo et al., 2007, Deng et al., 2006, Leung et al., 2006, Tang et al., 2010, Zheng et al., 2015, Labunska et al., 2015, Wu et al., 2016, Damrongsiri et al., 2016).

Figure 1-10 illustrates the informal recycling of WEEE in Guiyu, China. Guiyu is a region comprising of several small villages in Guizhou Province, Southern China, and most people in this region used to work in agriculture. Since 1995, the import and recycling of WEEE from other countries, especially the United States (US), via Hong Kong, has become one of the most important industries for the local economic development. WEEE contains both precious metals and toxic materials, so the recycling of them should be conducted with a high

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technological level in order to minimize the impacts and risks on the environment and people.

However, as shown in Figure 1-10, the recycling of WEEE in Guiyu was done in a primitive way for recovering copper through burning wires and recovering gold as well as other precious metals through using acid chemical strippers (Leung et al., 2006). Moreover, the non-recoverable parts and components from WEEE were burned and dumped arbitrarily. Even if the import of WEEE has improved the local economy, those primitive recycling operations have also resulted in serious environmental pollutions, i.e., heavy metal contamination of soil and water (Leung et al., 2006, Adeola, 2018), and has posed significant risks and impacts on the health and lifestyles of the workers as well as local residents. Furthermore, studies have also revealed a causal relationship between the environmental contamination from the improper reverse logistics activities for WEEE recycling and elevated Blood Lead Levels (BLLs) of children in Guiyu (Huo et al., 2007).

Figure 1-11 Guodingshan incineration plant in Wuhan, China (Hu et al., 2015).

As discussed in previous section, a sustainable reverse logistics system should not only focus on the economic performance but also be able to balance the environment and social dimensions of sustainable development through a series of decision-makings among which the network design is the most important strategic one. An improperly planned reverse logistics network may hinder the viability of the economic benefits from the recovery of EOL and EOU products while simultaneously and dramatically increases the environmental impact and risk to people. Hu et al. (2015) discussed the

17 environmental and social problems related to the improper location selection of Guodingshan incineration plant in Wuhan, China.

Waste incineration is a Waste-to-Energy (WTE) process converting MSW into energy that can be used for electricity generation and space heating. The combustion of MSW results in air pollution and emission of other pollutants, i.e., flying ash, so it is usually required that a buffer zone should be set up between the incineration plant and residential areas. However, as can be seen in Figure 1-11, the Guodingshan incineration plant is surrounded by several residential buildings and has a large amount of emissions when it operates.

Guodingshan incineration plant is established in 2006. Since then, it has been continuously complained by the local residents for the air pollution due to the lack of pollution controls and the short proximity to the residential areas.

Figure 1-12 Location analysis of the impact of Guodingshan incineration plant on nearby residential areas (Hu et al., 2015).

In China, it is regulated that a minimum 1000 meters’ buffer zone should be established from the waste incineration plant. However, as can be seen in Figure 1-12, six residential arears are located within 1000 meters from Guodingshan incineration plant and more than 30,000 residents living within a proximity less than 800 meters (Hu et al., 2015). That poses significant risk on the health of nearby residents, i.e., cardiovascular diseases (Fiordelisi et al., 2017), respiratory diseases (Ancona et al., 2015, Hu et al., 2015), etc., due to the exposure to air pollution from waste incineration.

The problem related to Guodingshan incineration plant is mainly caused by the improper locations and network planning of the reverse logistics system.

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Not only in Wuhan but also in other cities and municipalities in China, the inappropriate design and planning of reverse logistics systems have increasingly resulted in many environmental and social problems. In recent years, because of the perceptions of potential risk and environmental pollution, several protests have been reported in China for resisting the establishment of facilities and projects in reverse logistics (Huang, 2015, Hornby and Lin, 2016, Huang et al., 2015, Johnson et al., 2018).

Based upon the discussions above, the motivation of this PhD project is to first include the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development in sustainable reverse logistics network design, and then to provide advanced supporting tools for a better decision-making in order to balance economic, environmental and social sustainability.