This Day, That Year

In October 2009, a dispatch control center for renewable resources was officially put into use in Beijing’s Dongcheng district, as seen in an item from China Daily. The 8,000-square-meter facility was designed to store about 200 metric tons of trash a day.

In recent years, the capital

This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up policy.

has promoted a garbage classification system and built many more control centers to protect the environment.

With around 27.1 million residents, Beijing generated 9.02 million tons of household waste last year.

In 2000, eight cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in Guangdong

The newspaper and beyond

province became the first to pilot waste sorting programs.

In January, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released a notice urging 46 major cities to build treatment systems for household garbage and put in place regulations for the sector by 2020.

So far, 14 cities have adopted regulations on household garbage sorting, and 23 have included the issue in their legislative plans.

Although garbage classification is not a new concept to most Chinese, in many cities it has been a failure due to a lack of supervision and low public awareness.

The Shanghai government released an action plan in March to tackle the growing problem of household waste. According to the plan, every district in the city will have trash sorting programs by 2020. One of the goals is to reduce daily dry waste output from 21,400 tons to 18,100 tons while increasing the out- put of wet waste and recyclables. Wet waste can be used to make fertilizer.