China buried under mountain of waste in rush for urban life
The mainland is producing more garbage than it can deal with, raising social tensions and the risk of long-term damage
Violent clashes in Sichuan over a rubbish tip this week and a mountain of waste from Shanghai dumped in a neighbouring province earlier this month highlight one of China’s biggest growing pains – the country has too much rubbish and no place to put it.
China s rapidly transforming into an urban, industrial country and generating immeasurable amounts of waste in the process. The mountain of industrial and everyday garbage far exceeds the mainland’s capacity to recycle or process it.
The excess rubbish is either dumped or burned, igniting environmental concerns and raising social tensions.
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In the Sichuan case, more than 100 villagers from Langzhong protested outside a government office building on Thursday over the environmental and health dangers from a garbage dumping ground near their homes. Protesters and police came to blows but the authorities promised the dumping would stop.
Zhang Boju, general secretary of environmental NGO Friends of Nature, said the contamination concerns raised by the Langzhong case were not rare because many garbage sites across the country were operated by private companies willing to cut costs by inadequate waste treatment.
“China has many rules and regulations regarding garbage treatment, but very few cities follow those rules strictly. In numerous cases, we found the was no government monitoring,” Zhang said.
Environmental concerns were also raised with the discovery of 22,500 tonnes of illegally dumped garbage on the edge of Suzhou’s famed Lake Tai in Jiangsu province, in the heart of the heavily populated Yangtze River Delta.