From Avatar to mountain of rubbish: China pulls decade of trash from historic caves
Officials say villagers dumped rubbish when the local government banned incineration but did not yet have a collection service
The clean-up came around two weeks after a viral video showed the state of a natural cave in Zhangjiajie’s Cili county in Hunan province that had been used for years by nearby villagers to dump rubbish, resulting in garbage piling up “as high as seven or eight floors”.
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China’s ‘Spider-Man’ dangles off cliffs to clean up Tianmen Mountain in the city of Zhangjiajie
Rubbish and sewage built up in the descending cave and spilled to the surface, producing an unbearable stench, local press reported.
Confirming the findings on May 31, the Cili county government said it had found tonnes of waste in two ancient caves, including mineral water bottles produced in 2015 which indicated the refuse had been there at least a decade.
It said the rubbish was dumped by nearby villagers between 2010 and 2016 when the local government had banned waste incineration but had not yet created a new refuse collection and treatment service.
On Sunday, the county’s information department said the authority had assembled clean-up teams and removed more than 51 tonnes of rubbish, with the cleaning in Yangjiapo cave complete and the other in Datiankeng cave continuing.