BEIJING, June 11 (Xinhua) -- China's capital city Beijing is heading for a "garbage crisis" in four to five years, when all of its 13 landfill plants are full, the city's municipal administration commission warned on Wednesday.

    Beijing currently generates 18,000 tons of trash every day and the designed capacity of its garbage disposal plants is 11,000 tons each, which are already overloaded, Thursday's China Daily reported.

    Guo Weidong, the publicity division head of the commission, was quoted as saying that the commission had been working on laws and penalties to cut down garbage production in the capital and had sped up construction of new sanitary landfill sites.

    Beijing normally buries the city's garbage in landfills instead of incinerating it.

    Figures show that the volume of the city's trash is growing by 8 percent annually. So far, two of the 13 plants have already met their maximum capacity and will soon stop operations.

    Nie Yongfeng, a professor from Tsinghua University's College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, told China Daily that waste incineration is the only solution to the problem, but it is seldom used in Beijing for fear of the pollution it generates.

    Other large Chinese cities, such as Shanghai and Chongqing, are facing similar challenges on waste disposal.

    The amount of garbage Shanghai generated in 2007 was five times the size of the Jinmao Tower, the third tallest building in the world and the tallest in China, the Northern Weekly reported in April.

    The city's Changshengqiao sanitary landfill plant is expected to be full in 15 years, about two years ahead of schedule, city officials said.

    China's annual urban waste per capita is currently 220 kg, with8 billion tons of trash already piled on disposal sites or in landfills in 600 cities, the Southern Weekend reported.

    To battle the emerging crisis, public and private sectors are pushing for more ways to reduce waste output, such as the ban on free distribution of plastic bags imposed last June, which officials said has reduced polythene waste by at least 65 percent.