Municipal solid waste (MSW) recovery is critical to global decarbonization agendas. Existing studies have provided important insights into the environmental performance of alternative waste-treatment pathways through life-cycle and scenario-based assessments. However, less is known about whether recovery expansion translates into measurable reductions in observed carbon emissions. This study employs an instrumental-variable framework to estimate the economy-wide carbon-emission effects of MSW recovery using a 32-country panel from 1998 to 2023, addressing reverse-causality concerns in the recovery-emission relationship. The results show that, across the 32-country sample, a 10% increase in aggregate MSW recovery is associated with an average 0.95–1.15% reduction in per capita carbon emissions. This estimate reflects the net system-level effect of recovery expansion under the observed mix of recovery pathways and national conditions, rather than a common effect of individual recovery technologies. The effect varies substantially across recovery systems: energy-recovery-dominated systems show stronger mitigation effects than recycling-dominated systems, with further differences across recovery scale, energy structure, and socioeconomic conditions. Finally, selected non-sample countries are compared with the 32-country sample across key structural moderators to identify where recovery expansion is most likely to deliver large mitigation gains. Overall, the study provides cross-country causal evidence on how MSW recovery translates into economy-wide emission outcomes under different national conditions, offering a system-level basis for aligning recovery strategies with broader decarbonization goals.
Urban heat exposure in highly mobile cities cannot be fully characterized by residential conditions alone. Existing mobility-based assessments quantify absolute exposure or residential-to-mobile differences, but do not separate population-level exposure averaging from individual departures around that relationship. We develop a three-layer framework distinguishing absolute exposure, time-matched out-of-home thermal contrast, and conditional deviation from the Neighborhood Effect Averaging Problem (NEAP) relationship. NEAP-adjusted heat exposure deviation (NAE) measures the difference between observed mobile heat exposure (MHE) and the MHE expected given residential heat exposure (RHE). Using reconstructed hourly land surface temperature and mobile-phone trajectories for 179,588 commuters in Shanghai, we identify clear population-level averaging between RHE and MHE (β=0.730). NAE and the direct out-of-home contrast differed in direction for 32.3% of commuters. Elevated NAE formed a distinct peri-core and commuting-transition geography rather than reproducing absolute heat hotspots; 26.8% of upper-decile NAE grids were not simultaneously identified by high RHE, MHE, or direct out-of-home contrast. Higher NAE was associated with longer home–work paths, longer commuting duration, and more time spent away from home, whereas greater mobility entropy was associated with lower NAE. Higher-rent residential contexts and grids with mean commuter ages in the early-to-mid 30s also showed elevated NAE, while greater functional richness and development intensity were associated with lower NAE across parts of their observed ranges. These findings establish NEAP as an empirical reference for revealing structured mobility-related exposure deviations that remain hidden in conventional absolute or direct-contrast assessments.
