Shanghai to recycle more green waste

Chipped bark is used on flower beds at Chenshan Botanical Garden. The garden is home to a green waste processing center. [Photo/Shanghai Daily]

Shanghai's bid to become an environmentally friendly city includes plans to step up the processing and recycling of green waste like fallen leaves, mown grass and dead tree branches.

Attaining recycling goals still faces some obstacles, like a shortage of available land for facilities, a lack of government tax incentives to encourage more companies to operate in the industry and insufficient subsidies to help loss-making recyclers.

The city's parks, greenbelts, roadside trees and residential complexes generate about 600,000 tons of organic waste a year. The city wants to compost and mulch the waste for recycled use in parklands and greenbelts, according to the Shanghai Greenery Management Station, an arm of the Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau. Some of the waste can be turned into biofuel.

"Fallen leaves and dead wood returning to their roots is the best way of recycling green waste," said Li Xiangmao, a senior engineer at the station.

Compost made from the waste helps improve soil and plant growth, and it is also safer than fertilizers recycled from domestic garbage and sludge, said station officials. Wood chips from dead branches can be used as mulch to prevent water evaporation and curb dust pollution.

There are some processing sites for green waste in districts such as Jing'an, Baoshan, Minhang, and the Pudong New Area. Shanghai Botanical Garden, Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden and Gongqing Forest Park also recycle such waste.

The construction of an underground processing site was recently completed on Changhua Road in the Jing'an District, and a new 5-million-yuan (US$806,451) site in the Baoshan District will soon go into operation. A site in the Minhang District is under planning.

"There is sound insulation facility inside the new Jing'an crushing site to avoid neighborhood complaints," said Zhang Dongxian, an official with the Jing'an District Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau. "The underground site did cost more than it would have above ground."

Shanghai has about 90 machines to crush green waste at present.

Still, development of greenery recycling facilities in the city faces some difficulties, said Xu Xiaobo, deputy director of the station. The major obstacles are land shortages and absence of tax incentives, he said.

There are no sites zoned specially for processing green wastes. As a result, a site in Xinqiao Town in the Songjiang District, one of the earliest green waste processing sites in Shanghai, will have to move after its current lease expires.