The bane of modern cities and an environmental nightmare - the
garbage pile is growing, and so is public concern.
China's cities generate an average of 120 million tons of
garbage annually, official figures show.
That figure is growing 8 percent annually.
While there are policies and measures in place to recycle and
properly dispose of waste, a new survey has cast new light on
garbage, and what people think of it.
Conducted by the China Youth Daily, the survey of 1,800
people found that 75 percent of people feared that one day the
world will be buried under garbage because of increasing garbage
rates.
Roughly 23 percent of people said garbage hills can be seen
everywhere in the places they are living.
The survey also found that most people would like to contribute
a bit more to protect the environment.
About 90 percent of people said they would like to buy
environment-friendly and recyclable products event though they are
considered more expensive.
A culture of "over-packaging" has largely contributed to the
surge of daily garbage output, with about one third of garbage
generated from packaging material.
Among the country's 660 big and medium-sized cities, about one
third are surrounded by garbage dumps, figures from the Ministry of
Construction show.
Beijing has 23 garbage disposal plants, including 13 sanitary
landfill sites. The city generates 11,500 tons of domestic garbage
daily and roughly 96 percent of them was "disposed harmlessly",
according to Beijing Environment Protection Bureau.
However, up to 500 tons of garbage are dumped in suburban areas
daily in the Chinese capital.
In other cities, the situation is worse. The countryside has
become a dumping place for urban garbage.
"Farmers are the biggest victim to urban garbage, often dumped
right near their homes," Wang Er, a netizen, said. "Some farmers
have lived with garbage hills for years and can do nothing but
tolerate it."
The country's disposal rate of urban garbage is roughly 60
percent, a big leap from the 11 percent in early 1990s.
However, only 20 percent of urban garbage was disposed
harmlessly in the country through sanitary landfills, incineration
and composting - a biological process in which organic waste is
turned into humus like substance and returned to the soil.
By 2008, 98 percent of urban garbage in Beijing should be
disposed harmlessly, according to the city's White Paper on
Domestic Garbage Disposal, which was released as a guideline to
reduction and reuse of urban waste and pollution-free disposal of
domestic garbage.
(China Daily April 4, 2007)
