Guangzhou, China: Difficulties of garbage sorting

The question of what to do with garbage is nothing new to the residents of Guangzhou. To tackle the increasing amount of urban waste, the city introduced sorted trash bins more than 10 years ago. But that doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact.

While many questions remain to be answered, the city of Guangzhou is really not in position to wait any longer. Official data show that the city’s waste production is growing at 7% annually.

That’s about the same rate as its GDP growth. And 90% of the waste is disposed by burying. According to the city management commission, 180 million square meters of land have been used up in burying the city’s waste. Meanwhile, only 14% of household garbage is recycled, 6% burned to generate electricity and 0.7% disposed biochemically. And they say that’s largely due to the low rate of garbage sorting at the household level.

Q: The numbers certainly say a lot about the difficulty of waste sorting, I believe not only in Guangzhou but in many places in China. And that leads to the question.. what are the biggest obstacles?
A: There’s actually a poll on just this issue on Sina Weibo, China’s leading microblogging site. When asked why waste sorting is so difficult to enforce. About 16% of respondents admitted that the problem lies in their own hands, saying they still lacked the habit of waste sorting. 17% said they’d like to put more effort into sorting garbage but simply don’t know how. While 28% said they’re already committed to garbage sorting and they think it’s not really that troublesome. 39% are worried that even if they sorted their garbage, the waste won’t be processed properly at the disposal center anyway. So still an array of issues remain to be addressed there. And turning here to Beijing. The city has been promoting the idea of recycling waste since 1996, but today the capital seems under just as much pressure from the increasing amount of urban waste.  (CCTV)