Stubble no trouble for heating enterprise

Stubble and straw left over at harvest time was used as fuel for cooking stoves and food for livestock in China's vast countryside for thousands of years. But as living conditions improved, the residue largely became useless and farmers simply started burning it, causing air pollution.

Today, a company in Changzhi, Shanxi province, has designed a way to use the stubble to heat village homes, keeping emissions to a minimum, and then combining the ash with other waste to make organic fertilizer.

Shanxi Yitong Environmental Energy Technology Group finished construction of its first heating station with an environmentally friendly boiler in late 2017. It plans to put seven more stations into action this winter.