Will nationwide waste sorting solve China’s landfill problem?
- Landfill sites around the country are filling up ahead of time, adding urgency to the authorities’ need to cut the amount sent to them
- Rubbish sorting schemes in cities led by Shanghai have followed a boom in building incineration plants
It is the biggest in the country and was supposed to last 50 years, but next month a giant landfill in China’s northwest will reach capacity more than two decades ahead of schedule.
At Jiangcungou landfill, in a suburb of Xian, garbage is piled 150 metres (492 feet) high, local newspaper Huangshang News reported last month. Opened in the mid-1990s, it was meant to have a daily treatment capacity of 2,600 tonnes but receives over 10,000 tonnes of waste per day.
It is not an exceptional case. Landfills across China are reaching their maximum capacity at a faster rate than expected, and the government is pushing its waste sorting programme as the answer.
“Waste sorting is extremely urgent,” read an editorial titled “Why we need to sort waste” in state newspaper Economic Daily in July.
“Many cities are surrounded by landfills which are going to be full soon. An option for landfills is to burn the waste, but there would be toxic gas from the burning process. Waste sorting is aimed at reducing rubbish pollution, water pollution and air pollution to the lowest level.”
