Today it’s trash. Tomorrow? Maybe it’s art
constructed from concrete iron and deadwood, and a Chinese rose from discarded bicycle parts.
“It is most inspiring,” said Liu Jingqiang, designer of these sculptures. “If residents see their trash is turned into ’urban furniture’ with an artistic approach, they will realize the value of trash sorting. That’s more rewarding than a small cash payment.”
“They are so beautiful,” resident Lu said of the sculptures. “I want to contribute more recyclable trash, even without a reward."
Since April this year, more than 100 sculptures have been created at the station. They are placed at sites in subdistricts, greenbelts, gardens and pocket parks in Minhang.
“We hope to create a system of recyclable trash redemption this year, allowing residents to redeem items made from trash via their waste-sorting points,” said Wang Zhiye, director of the community management office of Pujin Subdistrict.
An upgrade of the city’s 170 transit garbage depots and 15,000 recyclable trash service stations is on this year’s agenda.
It’s not only art that emerges from recycling. Wet trash produced at residential communities is being turned into power in Shanghai.
In May, 9,796 tons of wet garbage were separated daily in the city, up 73 percent from the same period last year, according to the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau.
The city has been creative in its use of such a large volume of wet trash.
At the Liming Ecological
Organic Matter Treatment Plant in the Pudong New Area, nearly 80 percent of wet trash is used for biogas generation and about 3 percent is processed into biodiesel fuel.
The project, which started operation in January 2017, has generated more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.
“Residents of our community visited the plant and were shown how kitchen waste is turned to power generation,” said Geng Dechao, a resident of Qishan residential complex in Pudong. “It stiffened my resolve to do a good job in trash sorting. If we fail to do it, other types of trash can get mixed in with wet waste and may lead to breakdown of machinery.”
Indeed, in the beginning, that was a problem.
“A lot of other trash, even including construction waste like steel and concrete, got mixed in with wet garbage,” said Chen Weihua, vice manager of the Shanghai Liming Resource Recycling Co. “It did lead to extra work and even machinery malfunction sometimes lasting for two months.”
Over the past year, the resource utilization rate of the plant has been lifted by 10 percent, and the company has saved more than 1 million yuan in residue treatment costs.
The second phase of the plant is expected to go into operation in late July, which will bring daily treatment capacity to 1,000 tons of wet garbage, up from the current 300 tons.
Citywide, treatment capacity of wet garbage in Shanghai is expected to reach 7,000 tons per day by 2020, up from 5,050 tons last year.