(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-10 07:28

The more trash you produce, the more money you pay for its treatment. That will become a reality in Beijing, according to a meeting on Tuesday on the classification of trash. Some working units and residential neighborhoods will be selected to practice the new policy on a trial basis starting this year.

It is not easy for a city as big as Beijing to treat the garbage produced by its residents in a safe and clean manner. Thanks to efforts in the past decades, more than 90 percent of trash in Beijing can be treated in a harmless way and such a rate will reach 98 percent by the end of the year.

Yet, it is still a tough task to reduce the total amount of trash, which is estimated to be 15,000 tons a day, and realize its classification citywide.

It is indeed a good idea to connect the fees with the amount of trash a family produces. If it could be carried out to the letter, the economic leverage will certainly reduce the total amount of trash.

But it is one thing to map out a good policy, and it is another to have the policy properly implemented.

It is difficult to see how the relevant government department will be able to gauge how much trash every family and every working unit produces on a daily basis in this city of 12 million permanent residents. The workload will be tremendous and a large workforce will have to be organized to do the job.

Decision-makers are still discussing details of how the policy should be carried out.

It is believed service lines will be established for residents to make appointments with waste material collecting companies to collect their classified trash. This is indeed a good idea as it is not very difficult for residents to put different waste materials into different bags before specialized companies collect them. This is also an effective way to reduce the total amount of trash that individual families produce.

If this could be planned with the fee-trash-amount connection policy as a package, the awareness of trash classification can be cultivated among residents, and possibly residents may be mobilized to weigh the trash they have produced on their own to pave the way for the policy to be carried out.

To reduce the total amount of trash is as important as the safe and clean way we process it.

(China Daily 04/10/2008 page8)