Research on Legal Safeguards for the Utilization of Wet Garbage as a Resource—a Case Study of Shanghai City

Abstract

In 2019, Shanghai took the lead in enacting the first local legislation on mandatory classification of domestic waste, known as the "Shanghai Municipal Regulation on Domestic Waste Management." This legislation has played a crucial role in exploring and practicing waste reduction, resource utilization, and harmless treatment. However, there are still shortcomings in the disposal of wet garbage, including insufficient disposal capacity, immature resource utilization technologies, and overall low level of resource utilization. At the institutional level, there are also issues such as a rigid classification system, lack of targeted institutional design for wet garbage, and inadequate incentives for innovation and promotion of market entities. It is necessary to improve the legal safeguards for the resource utilization of wet garbage by focusing on four aspects: institutional system construction, market system construction, technology system construction, and regulatory system construction.