Discarded food poses unique challenges in processing of garbage
Kitchen waste refers to discarded or uneaten refuse generated by household kitchens. It is heavy in weight and can not easily be incinerated like other garbage due to dampness.
Separating kitchen waste from other waste can help to reduce organic matter in landfills, reducing odor and leachate and protecting incineration equipment.
It is therefore necessary to perform garbage classification when disposing of kitchen waste.
The Beijing Municipal Government held a demonstration on March 31 to show how kitchen waste is sorted, collected and transported under the principle of garbage classification.
There are special garbage trucks to process kitchen waste. Labeled “Kitchen Waste”, the beds of the trucks are covered in a hermetic metal topper to contain the smell of the rotting organic waste.
There are two sizes of the trucks — the smaller ones are designed to move through narrow streets, especially in the old-fashioned hutong, the larger ones are for wider streets.
Everyday, they stop at the residential communities in Xicheng district, pick up their kitchen waste and carry it to the kitchen waste transfer buildings nearby.
The first stop for the journalists participating in the activity was Fengrongyuan residential community. It has 10 residential buildings and 606 families.
In the afternoon, two garbage trucks arrived at the community to collect its kitchen waste.
The community now has 31 sets of garbage cans. Every set has three cans in different colors, green for kitchen waste, blue for recyclable waste and grey for other garbage.
When residents discard their waste, they should open the bag, pour the kitchen waste into the green bin, place bottles and cans into the blue trash bin and empty the waste bag into the grey can.
Yang Kun, an official of Financial Street office, said that if residents in the community can respect the waste sorting regulations and make it a standard practice in their daily life, they could be rewarded for their efforts with living commodities.
After the two trucks were loaded with kitchen waste at Fengrongyuan, they will leave for the Xibianmen garbage storage building, where they are weighed before driving to an area to unload. The building has six big boxes to contain the kitchen waste.
Now Xicheng district has 10 garbage trucks for kitchen waste, which are shuttling along nine fixed routes. In 2016, the trucks helped 383 qualified residential communities in Xicheng district to collect a total of 16,600 metric tons of kitchen waste, according to Liu Xudong, an official with the Xicheng district government.
A total of 35 to 40 tons of kitchen waste are stored in the Xibianmen and Tianning Temple garbage storage buildings every day before being shipped to Nangong Garbage Disposal Plant in Daxing district, where the kitchen waste will undergo bio-safe disposal.
In the whole year of 2016, Beijing households generated 170,000 tons of kitchen waste, and every ton of kitchen waste must be disposed of through standard procedures.
To save resources and facilitate the disposal of household waste, the first step is garbage classification as conducted by residents.
“Garbage classification is the core of urban garbage management, which should run through the whole process of urban garbage management,” said Feng Xiangpeng, acting director of the Division for Solid Waste Management at the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Management.
For the next step, Beijing will reduce waste sorting bins from three categories to two. One will be labeled “kitchen waste” with the other for the rest of household waste.
The bins labeled “recyclable” will no longer be displayed to avoid confusion, according to Lin Jinwen, Division for Environmental and Sanitary Facilities at Beijing Municipal Commission of City Management.