China Focus: New endeavors on waste treatment making way to Chinese life

Source: Xinhua| 2017-06-05 20:12:21|Editor: An
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BEIJING, June 5 (Xinhua) -- Seventeen years ago, in 2000, Beijing was among eight Chinese cities chosen to test a new garbage sorting system.

Almost two decades on, however, the majority of residential garbage continues to be sent to disposal plants unsorted, although the city now incinerates the majority of the unsorted garbage to address its sprawling landfills.

Beijing still lacks a designated city department to manage waste sorting, and the city relies on sanitation workers, many of whom are migrant workers, to sift through the trash and sell on anything suitable. It is hard, dirty work.

Xia Fan, founder of China's first "Internet Plus recycling" firm, said that everyone has the heart for environmentally-friendly processes, despite the troubles it could bring.

"For Chinese, the current garbage sorting measures are outdated and taken for granted, meaning it is harder for many to develop good habits," he said.

In just two years, Xia's company, New Living (Beijing) Information Technology, has signed up 200,000 eco-conscious households in Beijing, and collects a daily average of 15 tonnes of goods.

Through an app, users arrange collections of electric devices, plastic waste, paper and clothes.

Xia said consumer goods, which includes plastic and electrical items, account for 27 percent of all recyclable resources. If they are thrown in with regular household waste, Xia said, it makes recycling difficult.

Before the former bank clerk set up the recycling firm he worked alongside Beijing's 160,000-strong sanitation team. They hand-sort recyclable items and sell them to disposal sites.

During his time with the trash collectors, Xia said that many recycling firms voiced a preference to import foreign trash over purchasing it from domestic garbage collectors, because domestic waste cost more.

Monday was World Environment Day, the biggest annual event for positive environment action.

Starting in June, 46 Chinese cities are required by China's State Council to pilot sorting programs for household garbage.

According to the requirement, issued in March, the cities were urged to draw up measures detailing sorting requirements before the end of 2017, and recycle over 35 percent of recyclable items by 2020.

Even before the requirement, some local governments had started to encourage recycling.

In south China's Guangzhou, from Sept. 1, 2015, anyone caught wrongly disposing of garbage can be fined up to 200 yuan (about 30 U.S. dollars). For companies, the fine can go up to 50,000 yuan.

A dozen communities were selected to test waste sorting in Fuzhou, capital of east China's Fujian Province. According to the city's plan, waste will be divided into 4 categories: large waste, dry waste, wet waste and hazardous waste.

"Wet waste refers to food leftover, which accounts for over 60 percent of all household waste," said Huang Houxin, an environment specialist with Fujian Environmental Protection Society. "A wet waste treatment plant will be built by the year 2018, when compulsory waste sorting will be promoted through the whole city."

In addition to the garbage sorting, new processes have helped address rural China's trash ills -- nearly 64 percent is currently untreated.

Poultry farmer Ji Cuixia, from Jimo City in east China's Shandong Province, said livestock and poultry waste caused her the biggest headache, and not just because of the rancid smell.

The farmer said a new initiative by an environmental firm has really helped, as it now collects and recycles all her livestock waste.

"The company collects the waste once a week. I don't have to worry about dealing with it any more," said the woman.

Jiang Yong, chair of Qingdao Southern Guoneng Environment Science, said animal waste can be used as an energy resource.

The company, a subsidiary of China Southern Airlines, collects bio-waste for anaerobic fermentation, which produces marsh gas as fuel and biogas residue as biological fertilizer.

Guo Qingji, technology director with the company, said the company's garbage processing tank decomposes waste to separate the gas and liquid from the processed waste.

The company's plant, which mainly processes rural waste, can treat more than 400 tonnes of waste including animal dung, straw and kitchen waste, daily.

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