China Daily and China Radio International both report today that Beijing will soon be void of space for trash from the 20 million people living in the Capital of the world’s most populous country. With an annual trash growth rate of 8%, landfills (i.e. Beijing’s main method of taking care of trash) are about to overflow, and disposal plants are already overworked.
As Beijing doesn’t have much space for new landfill, nor much time to establish new landfills, city officials have stated that they are considering incineration, a method highly unpopular among the public, who fear more pollution in an already terribly polluted city. (Illustrative pic can be found here, the real nerds should check out this twitter feed.)
The local government is trying to argue that incineration isn’t necessary a big polluter. Clearly, there are advantages of emissions from incineration facilities over toxic gas generated by landfills, but then again, science is always an argument. (A good account of the debate can be found in this wiki post.) What is of course more disheartening is that the Beijing government, similar to governments everywhere, seem to care less about figuring out how people in Beijing could generate less trash to begin with. 8% growth per year is no joke.
Tags: Beijing, incineration, Landfills
everydaytrash 
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 1:27 pm |
Hallo!
Greatings from Germany! I have made an informationpage about an german recycling- and waste- management- idea for plastics and e- waste in german and english language (kryo- recycling). Pleace spread this infomation to all persons, you know, that many people get knowkedge about this idea and good alternatives to incineration.
If you and others have some more or new information, pleace send the information to my adress. .
Here is the link to my informationpage:
http://sites.google.com/site/kryorecycling
With best Greatings, Felix Staratschek, Freiligrathstr. 2, D- 42477 Radevormwald