Green Shed, a small household garbage classification station, will be launched next week in the Beijing suburbs, as an attempt to reduce garbage output and recycle more effectively.

The outside of the Green Shed, a new waste disposal effort in Beijing. [by Jiao Meng]

The 20-square-meter station is designed and sponsored by Huang Xiaoshan, a lawyer and environmentalist. It will serve about 1,000 families in Napavalley Community and nearby residents in Changping District.

With this station, he will begin a one-month experiment to thoroughly calculate the contents of Beijing residents' garbage with the help of volunteers from six environmental NGOs. This study will be an important reference for future policy making.

Tough task to solve trash problem

As a mega city with over 19.6 million residents, Beijing produces 1.8 trillion tons of trash every day, reported People’s Daily.

The capability of garbage treatment infrastructures is about 1.2 trillion tons, so landfill sites are constantly overloaded in their operations.

"In four or five years, the existing capacity of landfill sites will be fed to full," said Wei Panming, vice director of solid waste in Beijing municipal government. "If not solved, the city will be surrounded by garbage," he stressed in a CCTV interview.

Pioneer idea to garbage classification

Huang believed that the final solution is to promote garbage classification and establish industrial chain of recycling.

His idea is to encourage residents to simply separate household garbage in two kinds - dry and wet, rather than the normal four kinds - kitchen waste, recyclable, harmful and other waste.

He proposed his idea to Beijing municipal government and received their support earlier this year.

"Over 60% of Beijingers' garbage is water, mainly rooted from kitchen waste," Huang explained, "we encourage an easy way for them to dispose of their garbage. Residents should separate and dump the waste water into sewer and then separate in two kinds. The things left are for us."

"Equipped with dewaterer and grinder, Green Shed could classify and treat the garbage. "

"Green Shed cannot solve the follow-up problems, such as how to recycle different materials. However, it's still a long way to reach my final goal to build the whole recycling chain," he said.