The Emma Maersk vessel was loaded down with Chinese-made
Christmas gifts when she departed for Europe but when the world's
largest container ship returned to her home port she carried a less
jolly cargo…nearly 200,000 tons of foreign garbage.
Much of it was dumped on Lianjiao, a village in Nanhai District
in the city of Foshan, Guangdong Province, leaving local authorities
with no option but to get tough on the local enterprises that
accepted the waste.
"We’re still investigating who imported this garbage," said
Huang Songhua, vice-director of the Nanhai Environmental Protection
Bureau.
Lianjiao is already home to about 200,000 tons of waste plastic
and 500,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard from both overseas
and home. The quality of its air and water has declined because of
pollutants from more than 400 local garbage recycling and
processing plants in the area. ?
"Ninety percent of them (the recycling and processing plants)
are running without licenses and they’re processing collected
garbage inappropriately by just burning it without separating it,"
Huang said.
And the damage is severe.
"The land and water are so polluted that it would take over 100
years to rehabilitate them," said He Pinjing, director of solid
waste institute of Tongji University. "It’s already a major
headache to handle our own waste. How are we supposed to
accommodate overseas waste?"
In an attempt to prevent the situation from deteriorating
further, the Nanhai government recently ordered all garbage
recyclers and processors in Lianjiao and six other adjacent
villages to cease operations before January 18.
According to a CCTV report, the government, in conjunction with
the local security bureau and fire department, has set up
monitoring stations at all points of entry into Nanhai to bar any
vehicles carrying waste plastic from entering the district. The
plastic is one of the major sources of pollution in the
district.
"The waste plastic recycling business will be terminated in
Nanhai," said district Vice-Director Feng Yongkang. Enforcement of
the ban will involve a several measures.
"Plants found operating after January 18 will be forced to shut
down. Those running without licenses or are unqualified will be
banned immediately," a government official said to reporters. "All
of the garbage left at Lianjiao will be sent to a local
environmentally friendly electricity plant to be burned to generate
electricity."
Choked with the black smoke that pours from the chimneys of its
garbage plants and surrounded by rivers that have been blackened by
pollution, Lianjiao has processed more than 200,000 tons of garbage
per year, over the past 20 years. The volume of its daily trade in
garbage is nearly 750 tons making it the heart of Nanhai's waste
plastic recycling industry.
(China Daily January 18, 2007)
