A proposal concerning the control of pollution by solid waste made by Dr. Li Ningbin, president of the Liaoning academy of environmental science, has got the attention of Wen Shizhen, the Liaoning provincial secretary of the Communist Party, who asked Shenyang, Dalian, Fushun and Anshan to act accordingly as a first step.

In the article, Li suggests that urban garbage treatment tax be levied and industrial firms that discharge solid waste be taxed as an economic lever to control solid waste pollution. Subsidized encouragement should be given to those firms that raise the comprehensive utility rate of solid waste.

He also says that garbage should be managed in categories. The operational mechanism of the dangerous waste exchange center, its information management system and pollution incident pre-warning system should be perfected and there must be control of solid waste, the dangerous waste in particular, throughout the whole process from production to terminal disposal.

He says that there should be more study on the technology to safely dispose of dangerous waste, especially hospital clinical waste. There should be unified standards and technical plans. Efforts should be made to tackle the technology to dispose of waste chromium, soda residue and gangue. There should be more control on the existing dangerous waste disposal facilities and those that are not qualified must be shut down, he says.

(www.cenews.com.cn June 23, 2003)