Economy

Hangzhou tries "real name" system on garbage sorting

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-05-26 15:22

HANGZHOU -- Seeking to reduce the amount of trash in the city, Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang province, is experimenting with a measure to "name and shame" those who fail to put waste in the right place.

At the Dongpinggang Community in Hubing road, residents would mark their household numbers on garbage bags before disposing of them, and there are now inspectors staying beside the garbage bins, evaluating the classification of garbage.

These evaluation results are posted in a diagram near the garbage bins. The households which have correctly sorted more than 80 percent of their garbage will be marked in green, those with less than 40 percent garbage correctly sorted are marked in red and the remainder in yellow.

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Vice director of the Hubing Road office, Yao Jie, said, "The performance of each and every household in garbage sorting can be clearly seen by the public under such a system."

The regulations on garbage classification, which took effect in Hangzhou city on March 25, 2010, require residents and organizations to put garbage into four separate bins labeled recyclable waste, kitchen waste, hazardous waste and other waste. A total of 843 residential areas, about 55 percent of the city's total, have adopted this measure.

However, the waste separation initiative has not taken much effect, as most of the residents just see the additional receptacles for different kinds of waste as nothing more than extra trash bins, said local government officials.

Communities in the Hubing Road in Shangcheng District took the lead to start the real name system in June 2010. There are more than 1,200 households on the road that are currently covered by the measure. Later, the measure was also adopted by other neighborhoods in the city.

Yao Jie said that there has been a significant improvement in the situation of garbage sorting since the introduction of the real name system. "Now, more than 80 percent of the garbage is correctly disposed, which is 20 percent higher than that of the communities without the real name system."

Xia Yuandi, secretary of the committee of the Lijiaqiao Community in the Hemu Road, said the real name system works well, because people are afraid of losing face.

The real name system, however, also incurred discontent and even resistance among citizens, as some people see the measure as a rude violation of privacy.

Huang Jianhua, Party secretary of the Jinxiu community, said, "The garbage inspectors would know clearly what kind of food you have eaten and what kind of things you have used. It is really absurd."

Zhang Shukong, head of the Hangzhou Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said, as it is plagued by a waste crisis, the city is in dire need of such a measure to ensure the efficiency of garbage sorting and recycling.

The city is producing 6,850 tons of waste daily, and most of the trash is buried or burned, which poses a risk to the environment and the health of residents near the dump site.

About 70 percent of the garbage is being buried, while the speed of the piling up of the waste is posing a grave challenge to the holding capacity of the city's landfills. Garbage classification can significantly reduce the amount of garbage by sorting out the recyclables, Zhang said, adding that there are obstacles in the way of the implementation of the policy.

"The campaign of garbage sorting relies on the cooperation of each and every citizen, while changing people's living habits is hard," Zhang said.

Fu Liqun, director of the Sociology Research Institute of the Hangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said, to raise public awareness of environmental protection and citizenship is the key to solving the garbage problem.

As China is increasingly urbanized, the waste problem is becoming even more of a pressing issue. Garbage classification is nothing new to China' s big cities. The southern metropolis of Guangzhou released a regulation on April 1 which stipulates that those who fail to correctly dispose of garbage will be fined 50 yuan.