New | Clean-up ordered after China’s Yangtze turns into a river of floating rubbish

Workers are cleaning up a layer of rubbish floating along the banks of the Yangtze River in Chongqing province.

The river has suffered from waste pollution for many years, and household rubbish is often dumped directly into the river, the state-run China Central Television reported.

But recent heavy rainfall upstream has worsened the situation, forming a 10,000-square-metre belt of floating rubbish, according to the CCTV report.

Officials from the province’s environmental sanitation department sent workers to clean up the garbage immediately.

But workers said the floating rubbish would likely soon reappear with the rainy season.