As 1.4
billion people living in this country, China creates more than 360 million
tonnes of domestic waste every year. Around half of the garbage goes to
landfill, less than a quarter is burnt or used fertiliser, and the rest is not
properly treated. Landfill requires a lot of land and generate foul odours, as
the land and real estate price went crazy in China, incineration has become an
ideal choice for major cities.
The
government has set main priority on building new garbage incinerating plants,
and we saw a boost in new facilities between 2008 and 2015. More than 100
billion Yuan (AU$20 billion) has been invested in this sector, and by the end
of 2020, the country will have a total of 300 incinerators that are capable to
process 300,000 tonnes of garbage per day.
Actually,
burning the garbage is a profitable business in China, and with the incentive
from the government, it’s even more profitable than many other industries. The raw material, garbage, is free of charge or even paid to collect. The
electricity generated from burning garbage can feed back to the grid at a
generous buyback price. One side-effect is, in the past, some incinerator
managers even added coal to the garbage in order to generate more power for
profit.
However,
the incinerating is apparently far from ideal as a main garbage process means.
There is, so far, no enforced garbage sorting rules in China, residual and
recyclable wastes are generally mixed together, and sometimes even contain
waste with chemical hazard. There are no clear regulations to govern the
operation and pollution prevention in these projects. The existing standards
were out-of-date and vague as these were made up in the late 1990s. Residents
need the incinerators have objected and protested to the government in many
cities, because of the fume, odours and other forms of pollutions.
The waste
treatment is definitely most challenging in China than any other countries due
to the massive population, however I believe the current policy, either land
fill or incineration, is quite crude and non-sustainable. Waste treatment
industry should not be evaluated only by the profitability, and garbage
categorisation and sorting are the most important step before any industrial
handling process.
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