Watch where you dump your garbage

Beijing municipality’s new garbage management regulation, making it mandatory for residents to sort their garbage and dump it into different cans, came into effect on May 1.

Borrowing a page from Shanghai, which classifies its waste as dry waste, wet waste, recyclable and harmful waste, Beijing improved it further, calling it kitchen waste, recyclable, harmful, and other wastes.

However, Beijing needs to do more to effectively sort the 26,000 tons of garbage it is producing daily.

First, garbage sorting requires everybody to do their bit responsibly. There is no room for discrepancies here. Even if one person dumps kitchen waste into the can meant for recyclable garbage, the whole can ceases to be recyclable. People need to be educated about the whole process and told that it is their legal duty to sort their garbage responsibly.

Second, the behavior of truck drivers picking up garbage cans from various communities needs to be regulated too. There have been cases of residents having sorted their garbage into different cans, and a pick-up truck mixing them all together, undoing all the good.

Third, it might be a good idea to recruit volunteers to see waste is disposed of in the right way, reprimanding those who are irresponsible. In 2019, the total number of senior residents in Beijing touched 2.4 million. These are mostly retired residents who like to spend more time in the open. Maybe they could be urged to take turns to monitor the garbage cans. Such efforts have paid off in Shanghai; they should in Beijing too.

It might take months, even years for Beijing to get accustomed to garbage sorting, but a clean environment will be worth the effort.