Beijing is getting on sorting out its garbage

IN a residential community in Beijing’s northern suburbs, Cui Zhanxia was busy checking garbage bags before residents put them into different bins.

Cui is one of the community workers who help with garbage sorting after Beijing began to implement the mandatory practice on May 1.

“Waste sorting is not difficult. It should be a normal part of people’s lifestyles,” said Cui. “Residents have recently paid much more attention to garbage sorting. Our efforts are not in vain.”

Garbage sorting has become a hot topic in China. The Chinese leadership underlined efforts to cultivate the habit of garbage classification to improve the living environment and contribute to green and sustainable development.

A total of 237 Chinese cities have started to practice garbage sorting, data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development showed in January. Of 46 large cities, 30 have issued regulations on the classification of household garbage.

“It is a good way to purify the environment. We are delighted to make ecological progress,” Cui said.

Challenges

The appropriate classification of domestic kitchen garbage is one of the challenges to promote waste sorting. In 2019, Beijing produced more than 10.11 million tons of residential waste, including 194,900 tons from household kitchens.

Since May, the daily average amount of sorted domestic kitchen waste in the city has reached 740 tons, up 159 percent month on month and a year-on-year increase of 37 percent.

Before Beijing introduced the mandatory practice, the Lujiashan waste treatment plant in suburban Mentougou District processed about 100 tons of domestic kitchen waste every day, but the volume has increased by half since late May.

“Garbage classification has brought a rather positive effect,” said Zhao Xiaodong, deputy general manager of Beijing Shougang Ecological Technology Co.

Beijing law enforcement officers have investigated more than 500 residential compounds since May and most of the communities were found to have conducted promotion of sorting.

(Xinhua)