After dinner, Beijing resident Zhao Li poured his leftovers into a garbage bag and threw them in the trash can outside his apartment.

Zhao says he used to go through his trash, separating newspaper and plastic from other wastes. However, he found that the garbage truck dumped all of the trash together, so he has stopped bothering to do it.

Where can we pile up the garbage?

Data shows that Beijing produces 18,400 tons of garbage each day, with that number increasing by 8 percent each year. According to the Beijing Evening News on January 5, all of the existing landfills will be full in just four years.

Beijing has been facing trash placement issues since the '80s, but finding a suitable place to pile the garbage is proving more and more difficult. Another option is to burn the trash, but convincing local residents to allow a garbage incinerator in their neighborhood is even more difficult to do.

A landfill site in Beijing [Beijing Evening News]

Along with the rise in living standards and increasing population, the amount of trash in Beijing is also growing. However, the rubbish treatment capacity hasn't increased correspondingly. At present, the disposal plant treats 17,400 tons of garbage. Its initial design capacity is only 10,400 tons, so the plant is overloaded each day.

Zhao Li thinks a garbage classification system is a good solution to the problem. If residents and sanitation workers separate their garbage, much of the waste could be recycled and less trash would be delivered to the landfill sites.

Waste collectors' contribution

There are 170,000 waste collectors in Beijing, according to Wang Weiping, vice-chief engineer of the Beijing Municipal Infrastructure Committee. Waste collectors help the city recycle and reduce the amount of trash. Wang Weiping believes the city can also play a part. "If Beijing were to create laws that restrict companies from over-packaging items, waste could be decreased by 15 percent," he said.

Jingshan Hill is an artificial hill that covers an area of more than 230,000m² to the north of the Forbidden City. Last year, Beijing recycled 4 million tons of trash, which is equal to the size of two Jingshan Hills.

Reducing garbage is a long and complicated process that rests on public awareness. There are still many non-recyclable wastes that must go to landfills or treatment plants.

Automatic waste classification needed

Wang Hongzhe, head of the Xiao Wuji classification station on the East 4th Ring Road, says it doesn't matter whether or not residents sort their trash on their own. With the station's automatic separating machines, 90 percent of the trash is separated accurately. The infrared light selection equipment can even distinguish and classify garbage in 1/3 second.

Wang Hongzhe explained that materials such as timber, plastic, iron and paper are automatically recycled by the machines; kitchen wastes and leaves are made into fertilizer; materials that cannot be recycled are then incinerated to generate electricity; remaining wastes, such as muck and coal ash, are either sent to landfill sites or reused to make bricks.

According to Wang Hongzhe, the station is capable of classifying 1,500 tons of garbage each day, with the highest recorded amount being 2,300 tons. He believes the best solution to solve the trash problem is having more automatic classification stations rather than leaving it up to local residents' spontaneous action.

Residents worry about possible pollution from garbage incinerators

Currently, the main methods of dealing with garbage are burning or burying. Every year, burying waste takes up about 500 mu (about 333.5 hectares.) Burning it saves land and causes less harm to the environment, Wang Weiping said.

But residents who live near garbage incinerators worry about the possible pollution caused by burning trash, such as dioxin.

"The dioxin emission standard is 1 nanogram (ng) in Japan and 0.1 ng in Europe," Wang Weiping explained. "That means one cubic meter of gas released by a garbage incinerator only contains 0.1ng dioxin, which is equivalent to the amount of dioxin produced by cooking half-a-stick of a shish kebab. It is safe and not carcinogenic. There are 25 garbage incinerators located in downtown Tokyo. Austria is another country that's also building incinerators in its capital downtown."

Some people are against building garbage incinerators because they worry their real estate will depreciate due to the dioxin pollution. Wang Weiping clarified, "With existing techniques, the process of burning garbage will definitely bring about pollution. But the pollution can be controlled to a certain level. What's more, there must be a safe distance between garbage incinerators and residential districts."

(China Development Gateway by Jiao Meng, January 9, 2010)