Officials in Shanghai have been undertaking law enforcement since July 1, first day when the city adopted a trash sorting approach to ensure a safe recycling and green lifestyle.

The system divides garbage generally into four different categories - recyclable, perishable, harmful and items remaining.

During the weeklong exercise, the local law enforcement department issued 190 infringement notices, of which 55 percent were fined for not undertaking trash sorting, 35 percent for unregulated arrangement of trash bins and 9.2 percent for random ditching.

Shopping malls, receiving 66 percent of the tickets, were the major violators of the new regulations.

During the last week of June, sales of rubbish cans rose by 50 percent in Shanghai, a reflection of local families preparing for the regulations to be carried out in an attempt to reduce the pollution caused by both uncategorized landfills and rubbish burning.

However, no matter how meticulously the Shanghai residents divide the rubbish, volunteers, standing beside the trash bins, will exam the bags to ensure assignment of rubbish into the correct containers. When trash is found to have been placed in the wrong bag, the volunteers will unpack it and sort it out.

They have found themselves to be extremely busy, as, in peak time, a rubbish bin can be filled within 15 minutes.

Realizing that rubbish sorting is tedious work, but beneficial in long run, residents in Shanghai have begun to understand why the volunteers are so demanding.

According to a local woman surnamed Zhang, the sorting makes her community look cleaner and tidier. In addition, she loves the brownie points, such as, tooth brushes or towels, that the community offers to those who excel in dividing and disposing of their trash in a precise way.

Their performance is being evaluated by a new kind of credit account from which their efforts in leading a green life can be gauged.

Among 46 major cities expected to launch rubbish sorting projects sooner or later, eight areas, including Beijing, Taiyuan of Shanxi province and Yinchuan of Ningxia Hui autonomous region, have so far followed Shanghai's lead by issuing rubbish sorting regulations to legitimatize the campaign.

Twenty five out of the 46 cities have formulated penalties, most of which will impose a maximum fine of 200 yuan to punish individual violators or 50,000 yuan for companies and institutions.

Additionally, repetitive violators in Taiyuan, Tongling of Anhui province and Hangzhou of Zhejiang province, will face a loss of credits in regard to their personal files.

In Kunming, Yunnan province, dissoluble bags with two-dimensional codes are widely distributed to collect garbage, so that anyone who violates the rules can be traced simply by code scanning.

However, the green awareness is not restricted to trash sorting only, but also to disposable tableware overwhelmingly used in food delivery services. From July 1 to 4, this year, the country saw a 149-percent surge of orders that dropped disposable tableware compared to the same period last month.

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