Timeline

1995: The residents' committee of Caoyang No 5 Village in Shanghai installs a composting machine in the neighborhood and starts the city's first pilot program to separate food leftovers from domestic waste.

1996: Dachengxiang Residential Quarter in Beijing starts the capital's first pilot trash-sorting program, collecting plastics, paper and metals separately, while dissuading people from excessive use of disposable plastic bags.

2000: The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development selects eight cities－Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guilin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen－to launch a garbage-classification program, marking the start of the national trash-sorting program.

2009: The country's first Circular Economy Promotion Law comes into force. The law says governments at county-level and above must design an overall plan for the construction of separate collection and resource utilization facilities for urban and rural domestic waste, establish and improve the system of separate collection and resource utilization for domestic waste, and raise the recyclable rate of domestic waste.

2012-17: Regulations on domestic waste classification and reduction are passed in several cities including Beijing, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Hangzhou and Yinchuan, as well as in Guangdong and Hainan provinces.

2017: The State Council distributes an implementation plan for the classification of domestic garbage to all provincial-level governments, ministries and direct council agencies. The aim is to establish laws, standards and duplicable models of domestic garbage sorting systems in all municipalities, provincial capitals and cities by the end of 2020, and the recyclable rate of domestic waste must reach 35 percent or higher.

2019: The Shanghai Municipal People's Congress passes the city's first regulation on domestic waste management, emphasizing the classification, separate transportation and treatment of garbage, and imposing fines on individuals and companies that break the law. The regulation takes effect on July 1.

An amendment to Beijing's regulations on domestic waste management is approved by city legislators. Resembling the regulation in Shanghai, the Beijing amendment will become effective on May 1.

Nine government bodies－including the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment－issue a work plan for the sorting of domestic garbage. It specifies that 46 major cities must establish systems to classify and dispose of household waste by 2020, while cities at prefecture level and above must establish similar systems by 2025.