Shanghai's animal crematorium plans to set up city center corpse depots to encourage animal lovers to stop dumping their dead pets in public parks, rubbish bins and streams, state media said on Wednesday.
The city, one of China's wealthiest and most crowded, has seen a rise in pet ownership over the past few decades as incomes swell. People keep cats or dogs in small flats and walk them in crammed parks or narrow streets.
But Shanghai residents are resorting to burying dead pets in front of their apartment blocks or tossing them in local waterways for lack of another place to dispose of them, the official Shanghai Daily newspaper quoted city sanitation director Fang Yi as saying.
The city's only pet crematorium is 80 km (50 miles) from the center with no direct bus connection.
"We plan to establish an animal body collecting center in downtown areas as soon as possible to give more convenience to local pet owners," the paper quoted crematorium director Tian Zhongping as saying.
The crematorium has disposed only of two dogs and one cat since it opened in May.
(China Daily August 8, 2002)
