PARENT SESSION
27 - Life-Cycle Management and Decision Making
8:30 AM to 12:20 PM, Tuesday, 14 May 2002
Session Chair: Weidema, Bo ¹, Cowell, Sarah ², Saur, Konrad ³, Giacomucci, Antonio ⁴, ^{1 2 3 4} .
Stolz A

(27-03) Case study of the effect of environmental information on citizen's decision concerning waste management policy.

Terazono, Atsushi^*,1, Yoshida, Sanae¹, Matsuhashi, Keisuke¹, Moriguchi, Yuichi¹, ¹ National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan

ABSTRACT- The integrated environmental assessment using LCIA is expected to deal with different or multiple environmental problems (impact categories) where there are often some trade-off relationships. We have classified various environmental problems for integrated environmental assessment and found that the generic weighting factors for each problem by people had some influences on the actual valuation under the case study of milk bottle selection. However, it is not yet clear how each of scientific information on the environment and subjective judgment has some effects on the actual decision-making. Especially in the case of waste management policy, there can be some tradeoff relationships on the different environmental problems among some alternatives like incineration and landfilling. Therefore, it is not easy that citizens judge the preferred system from various alternatives. In order to find the effect of environmental information on the assessment by citizens, we open the workshop concerning solid waste management in one ward of Tokyo Metropolis. The theme is the comparative assessment of plastic waste management policy and approximately 20 citizens (inhabitants) participate in it. Three of different scenarios are assessed: current status (most plastic waste is landfilled), incineration with energy recovery and recycling. The environmental information of CO2, dioxins and other air emission, the area to be landfilled, etc. and economic information as well are calculated for each scenario in advance and provided for participants. Referring to this, the participants discuss together and assess the preference of each scenario. Through this process, we discuss which information could have the effect on the assessment and how the environmental information should be provided for the citizens as decision makers for their understanding and agreement.

Key words: workshop, decision-making, citizen, plastic waste