Time to separate treasure from trash

Municipal waste management is no easy task, but there is a win-win solution for Chinese cities that fits well with the country's ambitions for circular economy and sustainable development - separating trash from treasure.

Household waste is a serious problem in China today. The amount of municipal waste collected and transported each year jumped from 30 million tons in 1980 to more than 160 million tons in 2009. And it has become increasingly difficult to build landfills and incineration facilities, still the main mode of waste treatment in China, because of scarcity of land and public concern over their impacts on people's health and the environment.

Clearly, there is an urgent need to transform this traditional model, which relies on landfills and incinerators, into a modern one, which emphasizes "reduce, reuse and recycle".