According to a Xinhua News Agency report on March 27, villagers
in Dingyuan Town, Lanzhou, capital city of northwest China's
Gansu Province, have had enough of almost non-existent garbage
management systems, and calls have been made for the government to
do something about it.
Dingyuan is one of the largest vegetable distribution centers in
northwest China. Vegetables within a 500-km radius around Lanzhou
are collected and processed here before being transported to
coastal cities in south China. The industry has proven lucrative
for local farmers, but the environment has not benefited. The
problem lies in the fact that there is no effective garbage
management system in place to handle the large amounts of waste --
primarily rotting vegetables -- that are produced every year.
The total annual storage capacity of vegetable warehouses in the
town is about 40 million tons, about half of which becomes waste
every year, said Yang Dejun, general manager of Hengtong Vegetable
Preservation Co Ltd. Adding vegetable waste produced by farmers,
the total amount of waste is about 30 million tons.
Deputy Party Secretary of Dingyuan Town, Wang Xiwen, told Xinhua
that the waste vegetables cannot be used as fertilizer because they
contain bacteria, which will affect the quality of future crops.
Neither can they be used to make chicken feed because of high
pesticide contents. Nonetheless, they cannot be left untreated
because the natural decaying process breeds flies and mosquitoes,
and pollutes the environment, namely the air, rivers and
underground water supplies.
"Heaps of rotting vegetables are everywhere, and so are the
flies, especially on a hot day," complained Jiang Yingquan, a
villager.
The problem isn't peculiar to Dingyuan. Some villages in
Tianshui, Dingxi, Linxia of the province are also badly
affected.
Other waste issues
For provinces such as Gansu, the use of mulching film -- a
light-inhibiting material used to prevent the growth of weeds -- in
agriculture causes what is known as "white pollution".
Li Lin, a civil servant in Xianfeng Town, Linxia Autonomous
Prefecture, said that mulching film is used over about 200, 000 mu
of farmland, an average of three kilograms per mu. This equates to
about 600,000 kg of mulching film waste every year.
Song Hongwei, director of the environment supervision department
of the Gansu Environmental Protection Bureau, told Xinhua that
mulching film is generally not biodegradable, and used mulching
films abandoned on farmland harden the soil. But disposing of these
films is also a problem because they produce toxic fumes when
burned.
Household garbage is another growing problem. Rising affluence
has resulted in an increase in volumes of household waste. However,
with no designated disposal sites, garbage is strewn and dumped at
random.
Construction waste, too, adds to the overall garbage issue. Xue
Xiwu, head of Anyuan Township of Tianshui City, said that this kind
of garbage takes up too much space although it is not a big
environment polluter.
More significant in terms of health risks is medical waste. Wang
Yinzi, director of Luomen Township Hospital in Wushan County,
Tianshui City, told Xinhua that most solid waste produced by the
county's hospitals can be burned or buried, but liquid medical
waste cannot be properly dealt with because two-thirds of hospitals
cannot afford waste water disposal facilities.
According to Xinhua, the garbage management problem in poor
western provinces like Gansu is a serious one. No funds have been
allocated to deal with the problem, and even if there were, no
government department has stepped forward to manage the
situation.
"At present, the garbage disposal system in the poor western
countryside is very much 'dump where you please'," according to Li
Lin, a civil servant with the Tianshui Environmental Protection
Bureau. "The scope of responsibility of construction and
environmental protection and health supervision departments in
cities or counties doesn't extend to the countryside. Plus,
county-level environmental protection bureaus and health
supervision departments are understaffed."
This less-than-satisfactory state of affairs has forced village
authorities to take matters into their own hands. Dingyuan, for
example, has transferred the burden of garbage management onto
local companies because it does not receive any funding from the
county government for this purpose.
Companies in the vegetable business have to transport waste
vegetables to landfills miles away from the village at their cost.
In addition, they have to pay for the manpower to do so, which is
provided by the town.
Yang Dejun said that his company spends 20,000 yuan (US$2,494) a
month disposing of waste, and 3,000 yuan a year to the township
government for the manpower. Other larger companies can pay more
than 10, 000 yuan a year on manpower alone.
Disgruntled grassroots officials and residents have called for
the central government to keep in mind the issue of garbage
management in their plan to build a new socialist countryside. What
the rural areas need are garbage disposal facilities and a sound
management system.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Yunxing, March 30, 2006)
