China’s garbage-strewn capital of Beijing has promised to boost spending to banish growing mountains of waste, but is struggling to persuade its upwardly mobile residents to sort their trash.
Beijing is China’s biggest municipal producer of trash, having collected 8.7 million tonnes of household waste last year, almost double that of a decade earlier, and residents deride its sprawling landfills as a “seventh ring road.”
The capital, with a population of 22 million, has vowed to recycle all household waste by the end of 2020, with officials saying it would increase its annual budget of 2 billion yuan (US$290 million) to improve disposal and home sorting.
Despite building an army of 20,000 “Green Armband” workers since 2010 to teach the art of sorting garbage, Beijing finds it tough to increase participation.
“There are only classification targets ... but no punitive measures for residents who disobey the instructions,” said Yang Kun, a city management official in the upmarket Finance Street district. “We can only persuade them and introduce incentives.”
The Chinese government this month promised to make garbage sorting compulsory in 46 cities by the end of 2020, including Beijing, but the capital could need another 50,000 Green Armband workers to meet targets.
China’s 246 large and medium-sized cities produced 1.9 billion tonnes of solid waste in 2015, spurring government plans to cut landfill and step up recycling and incineration.
China aims to invest nearly 200 billion yuan to reach a target of recycling 35 percent of household garbage by the end of 2020.
Beijing, where incineration rates have quadrupled to 42 percent in just a decade, aims to boost to 10 its current complement of four plants by next year.
The city traditionally relied on people who collect paper, bottles and electric devices for sale to processing plants. Half its trash was handled by 170,000 such workers in 2013, state media reported.
However, rising living standards have eroded incentives.
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