Shenzhen is mulling legislation to introduce garbage disposal fees to promote waste classification and reduction, according to the city’s urban management, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported Thursday.
Based on a half-year investigation, more than 10 deputies to the Municipal People’s Congress on Wednesday afternoon met with officials from relevant government departments to discuss waste reduction, waste classification and the harmless treatment of garbage.
According to deputy Zheng Xueding, Shenzhen has established a disposal system for eight categories of household garbage. However, kitchen waste, which accounts for 50 to 60 percent of total household garbage, is not included in the system.
Yang Lei, deputy inspector of the city’s urban management, said an exploration of how to classify kitchen waste was made in 2011, but the plan was abandoned because of the difficulty of deodorizing and high costs.
Yang added that kitchen waste not only accounts for a large proportion of household garbage, but also requires higher standards of garbage collection, transportation and incineration. If kitchen waste is classified separately, it will significantly reduce the amount of landfill waste and garbage that requires incineration.
To this end, the draft regulations on household garbage classification propose classifying kitchen waste based on the current eight categories. Meanwhile, the authority is planning to build supporting facilities to improve the disposal capacity of kitchen waste.
In recent years, Shenzhen has been stepping up its efforts in waste classification. In addition to placing classification facilities in residential estates, the city has also proposed removing garbage bins from building stairwells and setting up garbage classification points on the ground floor.
Yang said the city is promoting the equipping of classification points with small sinks for conducting kitchen waste classification and recycling. The city may also remove all of the garbage bins from building stairwells, charge fees for garbage disposal and equip the classification points with wireless monitoring, if the regulations are approved.
Over the past decade, Shenzhen’s garbage production has increased by about 6 percent each year. At present, the city’s annual garbage production has exceeded 7 million tons, with 24,000 tons of garbage being produced each day. The city’s recycling rate is only 25 percent.