Throwing money down the drain?

The country's waste-treatment plants produce thousands of metric tons of sewage sludge every day, but a lack of funding for advanced processing means illegal dumping is rife and poses a potential safety threat to farmland and water sources. Zheng Jinran reports.

Every day since early March, Ma Xiaoxian, head of the Environmental Protection Enforcement Bureau in Shaanxi province, has been following trucks carrying sewage sludge in an attempt to find out where the waste is taken after processing. What he discovered left him deeply troubled.

Sewage sludge is residual, semi-solid material produced as a byproduct of the treatment of industrial or municipal wastewater.