The City Appearance and Public Sanitation Bureau is seeking to set up waste processing plants equipped with the latest technology to handle rubbish in an environmentally sound way.

Shanghai is currently building three major plants in Nanhui, Fengxian and Pudong districts while small treatment facilities are to begin operations in Xuhui and Hongkou districts.

Together they aim to treat 300 tons of kitchen rubbish daily.

"Money from private sectors is welcome because handling waste in an environmentally sound way incurs huge costs," said Shen Zhengchao, deputy director of the bureau.

Shanghai discards around 1,000 tons of food waste daily - 70 percent of which comes from restaurants and hotels.

The remainder is waste disposed from household kitchens and company canteens.

"Chicken carcasses and residual waste have a bigger negative impact on the environment and are harder to collect and transport because they are rich in moisture and fat and easily rot and stink," said Xu Zhiping, spokesman for the bureau.

Any business which profits from selling food is now required to report the amount of leftovers generated, detail treatment methods and pay the authority for disposal.

The charge has been limited to 215 yuan (US$26) per ton, 115 yuan (US$14) for treatment and 100 yuan (US$12) for disposal.

Xu said it was reasonable to impose the charge on profit-making businesses that produce waste.

Kitchen waste was not a problem as livestock farmers on the outskirts of Shanghai bought it to feed their animals.

But in 2000, the Municipal Agricultural Administration banned trading waste.

Last year, the city began advocating the employment of biological waste processors, each of which costs 200,000-300,000 yuan (US$24,210-36,320).

But this was mostly confined to large restaurants and hotels.

The treatment plants will produce fertilizers and feeds using biological methods.

Yet public awareness was the most effective way of stemming the amount of waste being disposed, Xu said.

(China Daily May 18, 2002)