Garbage besieges one third of Chinese cities
- By Chen Boyuan
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 19, 2013
Chen Changzhi, vice chairman of China's top political advisory body, China People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), has said that waste disposal should be a priority for China as it considers sustainable development. Chen favors a combination of incineration and landfills to contend with trash. According to Chen, such a method would mean fewer dumps and that the heat from burning garbage could be used to generate electricity.
According to the Beijing municipal government's waste processing sector, garbage's volume shrinks by 80 percent after incineration. Its weight, the processing sector said, decreases by 93 percent.
When considering garbage incineration, many people naturally fear air pollution, especially those who live closest to the proposed incinerator locations. China has the technology however, to limit dioxins released to under 0.1 nanogram per cubic meter of air, the European Union's standard for trash incineration.
Cao Shuyan, an associate professor with Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology, said supervision is key to garbage incineration. She suggested inviting the public to environmental assessments, as well as to the facilities' operation supervision. Cao added waste classification is the precondition to incineration.
A number of major cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, pioneered garbage classification in 2000. Thirteen years later, though, the initiative has yet to get off the ground. A China Youth Daily survey on the subject found that most people did not participate because "old habits die hard," because doing so would be "complicated," or because of the government's "lack of attention and investment."
According to an official from the National Development and Reform Commission, China will invest 6 billion yuan (US$967.74 million) in waste disposal over the next two years, with a focus on daily waste's harmless handling, as part of the country's Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011-15). The investment will go toward improving existing garbage facilities and creating new ones wherever necessary.
But the resolution ultimately lies in public's attention to the issue. Waste reduction and classification are the most effective - and easiest - ways to address the problem.
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