Cities take lead in efforts to sort residential trash
Print Edition
On a summer morning in Shanghai, residents queue in front of a waste collection point in Jiading District, waiting to put their garbage into different bins.
Scanning a QR code with their mobile phones, residents are rewarded points in their 鈥淕reen Account鈥 apps for separating the waste into different categories such as paper, metal and glass.
鈥淚鈥檒l have 500-600 points in my account at the end of this month, which can be exchanged for daily necessities like toothpaste and detergent,鈥 said local resident Zhao Genfa.
The 鈥淕reen Account鈥 app, launched by the Shanghai Municipal Government, aims to encourage garbage sorting by offering incentives to residents.
鈥淕arbage is not a small problem,鈥 said Chang Jiwen, deputy director of the resources and environmental policy research institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council.
System of laws by 2020
In cities, the ever-increasing amount of garbage has piled up at a speed which exceeds the capacities of landfills and incinerators.
To tackle the tricky issue, central and local governments have initiated various garbage sorting campaigns.
In 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued 鈥淭he Implementation Plan of Garbage Sorting,鈥 which required 46 cities nationwide to carry out mandatory garbage sorting and guided residents to sort through garbage on their own.
The plan also proposed establishing a basic system of laws and regulations on waste sorting by the end of 2020.
Starting this year, garbage sorting has been promoted in all cities at the prefectural level or above, after being piloted in 46 cities.
Shenzhen installed 24,000 recycling bins for used batteries and 12,000 bins for collecting old fluorescent lights across the populous city and employed professional teams to dispose of the hazardous waste. In 2018, Shenzhen recycled 72 tons of batteries and 135 tons of lights.
In the southeastern city of Xiamen, garbage sorting was incorporated into the primary and middle school curriculum.
鈥淢y two children play the role of 鈥榩ublicity officers鈥 and 鈥榮upervisors鈥 of garbage sorting in the family,鈥 said local resident Liao Zhenrong.
However, garbage sorting is still in a fledgling stage in China, partly because some residents still lack the initiative and imperative to sort their own waste.
Liu Jianguo, an environment professor at Tsinghua University, said it took decades, or even longer, for developed countries to popularize garbage sorting.
To raise people鈥檚 awareness of garbage sorting, some local governments in China have been considering a series of penalties for those who do not dispose of their waste properly.
With related regulations coming into force in Shanghai next month, those who fail to put their garbage into the right bin will be fined from 50 yuan (US$7.3) to 200 yuan. Companies that fail to recycle or sort waste properly will be fined up to 50,000 yuan.
Beijing also plans to make garbage sorting mandatory in schools, hospitals, tourist spots and hotels, and gradually expand the practice to the entire city.
鈥淣o matter how grand our environmental protection ideas, it鈥檚 important to start with baby steps, such as garbage sorting,鈥 Liu noted.
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