An official with the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) of China on Tuesday said the SEPA is closely monitoring British shipments of garbage to the country.

Lianjiao, a remote village in Foshan city, south China's Guangdong province, was unknown to the world until it was fingered for its trash business -- importing garbage from the UK.

Britain's Sky News TV recently screened a program titled "Are you poisoning China?", revealing how UK plastic waste was ending up in Lianjiao.

Picking up on overseas reports, Chinese media have pointed out that while China exports 16 billion pounds of commodities to the United Kingdom each year, the UK sends back 1.9 million tons of rubbish.

The SEPA official said Lianjiao village -- attached to the Nanhai District industrial zone of Foshan City -- is a major domestic plastic waste collecting and processing region that has existed since the 1970s.

Lianjiao village processes 200,000 tons of plastic waste every year -- 80 percent from other parts of China, but the rest imported from other countries, sometimes suspiciously, the official said.

"Some banned types of plastic waste have been found in Lianjiao village," said the official.

No company in Lianjiao Village has state approval to import waste from other countries, according to the investigation by environmental authorities.

The official said media had exposed illegal rubbish imports to Lianjiao as early as September 2006. At that time, the Guangdong Provincial Government urged the Foshan Municipal Government and Guangdong Provincial Environmental Protection authorities to investigate and deal with the case.

The local government has banned unlicensed enterprises and individuals that engage in plastic waste business, suspended plastic waste processing factories that are not equipped with environmental protection facilities and seriously dealt with enterprises which incinerate trash or illegally occupy public venues to store waste.

The Chinese government bans the import of solid waste which cannot be used as raw material. Imported solid waste which can be used as raw material must be registered.

(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2007)