Beijing plans to revamp the collection of restaurant waste and eventually phase out vendors who ply the city's eateries buying scraps used for pig swill, the Beijing Morning Post reported yesterday.

The city's thousands of restaurants sustain an army of poor migrant workers, some of whom use barrels placed on three-wheel cycles to buy uneaten food, cooking oil and kitchen scraps.

They take the smelly loads to the city's outskirts, where it is sold for pig feed and - despite food safety rules - the oil is recycled for cooking, soaps and other goods.

With the 2008 Olympic Games looming and the country's food hygiene under tough scrutiny, city officials have said they will begin phasing out the vast informal trade and replace it with "unified collection" by specialized contractors, the report said.

This means privately owned swill carts will disappear from Beijing, the paper said.

The phase-out will begin at Olympic Games venues, a well-known chain of Peking duck restaurants and more than 100 hotels that have signed deals to receive Olympic Games guests, the report said.

By 2010, the city's 30,000 restaurants will be under the plan, which calls for standardized handling of kitchen garbage at waste treatment plants.

Beijing's restaurants produce 1,200 tons of food refuse every day, according to the report.
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(Shanghai Daily September 14, 2007)