Some of the latest news from the wide world of waste: 3 – 16 May 2012.

CHINA

• Trash Hill Casts Shadow on Village (China Daily)

• China to Build 15 Waste Incineration Power Plants in Iran (Bernama)

• China Everbright’s IPO — It’s Back, and Much Smaller (WSJ)

• Restaurant Food Scraps Not Recycled in Beijing, Despite Changes in Regulatory System (China Daily)

US

• Plasma Gasification Contract Extended by US Air Force (Waste Management World)

• Group Plans to Open ‘Zero Waste’ Grocery Store this Summer (Statesman)

• Oil from Waste Plastics and Tyres Approved by Oil Company (Waste Management World)

• GE Partners with EPA on Appliance Recycling (Waste Management World)

• 3 MW Solar Farm Landfill in New Jersey Dedicated (Yahoo Finance)

INTERNATIONAL

• EU Investing in Toxic Waste Projects in Developing World, GAIA Claims (Guardian)

• Waste Paper Markets See Fall in Prices (letsrecycle.com)

• A Rough Patch for Plastics (Recycling Today)

• Waste Projects Get Rates Boost in UK (MRW)

• Recycling Up in England but London Still Lags Behind (MRW)

Some of the latest news from the wide world of waste: 19 April – 2 May 2012.

CHINA

• Bo Xilai’s Brother Quits China Everbright International (BBC)

• $32 Million Waste to Biofuel Contract in Northeast China (Waste Management World)

• Unused E-Waste Discarded in China Raises Questions (BBC)

• Waste to Energy Facilities to Receive 10cents / kWh in China (Waste Management World)

US

• Waste-to-Energy Industry at Crossroads in Maine (Kennebec Journal)

• New York’s Largest On-Farm Biogas Power Project Begins Operations, Generates Electricity for Nearly 1,000 Homes (WSJ)

• Carbon Emissions from Waste Measured in EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory (Waste Management World)

• Johnson Controls South Carolina Battery Recycling Plant Nears Start-up (Automotive World)

• New York’s New Idea (Waste Management World)

INTERNATIONAL

• Following Garbage’s Long Journey Around the Earth (NPR’s Fresh Air)

• World Bank Arm Considers Funding Sri Lanka Waste-to-Energy Plant (Bloomberg)

• $3 billion Request for Hong Kong Waste Projects Rejected (eco-business.com)

• 1 MW Anaerobic Digestion Plant Awarded Contract in SW England (Waste Management World)

• EU Member States Still Landfilling Three-Quarters of Their Waste (Waste Management World)

Some of the latest news from the wide world of waste: 22 March — 4 April 2012

CHINA

• Where (And What) China Imports from U.S. (Forbes) — #3 is scrap metal!
• Over 100 Arrested for Making ‘Gutter Oil‘ (China Daily)
• Waste Plastic Factory Ablaze in East China (China Daily)
• Chinese Man to Sue Chinese Government Over Unreported Incinerator Emissions Data, Claims Pollution from the Plant Caused His Son’s Paralysis (China Daily)

US

• Waste Management Estimates Trash it Collects Worth $40 Billion (Bloomberg)
• LA Mulls 10-cent Fee for Each Paper Bag Taken at Checkout Line (LA Times)
• Minneapolis Turning Recycles Rooftops into Road Surfaces (Star Tribune)
• The Continuing Debate about Banning Plastic Bags (Triple Pundit)
• Oakland Unveils Industry-Leading Waste-to-Energy System (East Bay Express)

INTERNATIONAL

• UK Develops Prototype to Recycle Human Waste into Energy and Water (Waste Management World)
• EU Nonferrous Scrap Dealers Report Sharp Drops in Orders (Recycling Today)
• India’s E-Waste Output Jumps 8 Times in 7 Years (Times of India)
• A UK-Developed Fuel Cell that Runs on Food Scraps and Sewage (Forbes)

Some of the latest news from the wide world of waste: 8 – 21 March 2012

CHINA

• China Everbright Signs Wujiang Waste-to-Energy Project
• IBM Opens China’s First Factory to Refurbish Computers, Tapping a $2bn Market
• Chinese Sinoma Energy Signs Agreement to Build WtE Plant in the Philippines
• China Builds Home Made Nuclear Waste Processor

US

• Waste Heat Technology Developer Alphabet Energy Secures $2 million in Debt Financing
• Florida Legislature Passes Key Solid Waste Legislature
• New York Startup Converts Plastic to Oil
• In Santa Cruz, County Plastic Bag Ban Goes Into Effect
• NYC Considers Christmas Tree Disposal Fine

INTERNATIONAL

• Taiwan EPA Eyes Greener Use of Waste Disposal Facilities
• Tanzania: Turning Rubbish into Cooking Fuel
• Delhi Residents Fume over Trial Run of Incinerator
• UK Government to Boost Precious Metal Recycling
• Lagos to Generate Electricity from Landfills
• Seoul Recovers Energy from 730,000 Tonnes of Waste
  

CHINA

• GE Gas Technology to Power China’s Largest Landfill Gas Project

• China to Recycle More Industrial Waste

• Garbage Crisis to Bring Higher Residential Collection Fees in Beijing

• Chinese Government Offices Embark on Ambitious Recycling Program

• Capital to Lead Nation in Trash Burning

US

• Plasma Arc Waste Gasification Plant May Come to Ohio

• California to Develop Single Stream Recycling, Biofuel and Energy Facility

• US Responsible Electronics Recycling Act Sparks More Debate

• New, Higher CalRecycle Redemption Rates Take Effect in California

• New York City Seeks Waste to Energy Proposals

INTERNATIONAL

• 51 Million Cans and Counting for UK Recycling Program

• UK-developed Microbial Fuel Cell Produces Biogas and Energy from Waste

• Video: Biogas Facilities to Co-Digest Hanoi’s Organic Waste

• UK Anaerobic Industry on a Role, Says WRAP Report

• Energy Recovery from EU Waste Rose 13.5% in 2010
  

The post especially resonated with your’s truly, as it echoes much of what I attempted to convey in the “Dirty Side of China’s Clean Growth.” In particular the last point, referenced here:

Unintended consequences (适得其反): This refers to when companies do good things for the environment but still have a negative impact. The company named was Jinko Solar.

It is very encouraging to see this discussion gaining more traction in the mainstream, especially through the engagement of Chinese audiences.

China’s absent representative government makes the promise of enhanced corporate accountability all the more dependent upon Chinese behavior and demands, both as consumers and citizens. Anecdotal evidence suggests there is great potential in this area. You can count on my sustained cheerleading from the sidelines.

China’s leading waste-to-energy developer, China Everbright, has received more than US$200 million vis-a-vis Asian Development Bank’s commitment to funding companies with above average environmental goals. It’s a great idea on paper. However, flaccid environmental reporting standards in China and worrying trends in the incineration sector reveal a moral hazard in international institutions’ move to capitalize the private sector. Growing segments of China’s population are beginning to demand transparency and accountability from China’s cleantech sector. Will principled organizations like the Asian Development Bank follow their example?

Part 2 of 2: Benchmarks? What Benchmarks?

Voluntary Reporting Fills Some Gaps in Regulatory Compliance

Part 1 of 2 uncovered ADB’s lacking due diligence in the China Everbright deal. In the absence of robust monitoring on the part of ADB, what hope is there for environmental compliance in response to regulatory or market pressure?

Somewhat encouragingly, China’s central government has attached increased importance to environmental reporting obligations in recent years.

The 2007 “Guiding Opinion on Strengthening the Supervision and Management of Environment Protection of Listed Compan[ies]” (Chinese version here) outlines environmental reporting requirements for Chinese listed companies. Under these regulations, a company must disclose any violation of an environmental law, environmental lawsuits, new investments that have significant environmental impact, as well as environmental decisions that could impact a company’s share value.

A first foray into government-led corporate environmental oversight, the initiative got off to a sputtering start. Roughly a year after being launched, observers doubted the program’s efficacy. Even the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s own senior official Pan Yue noted on record

“of all listed companies on the mainland, only half included environment performance in their 2006 annual reports. Even for those which did touch on the issue, the quality of reporting was generally poor and cannot help shareholders.”

Without a forceful public watchdog, one might expect to see a listed company like Everbright pursuing external verification mechanisms – widely used in Europe and the US – to prove their environmental compliance.

Voluntary reporting schemes, like the Global Reporting Initiative, have seen considerable growth in China in recent years. By 2010, about 700 companies were producing sustainability reports, and at least 60 had applied GRI guidelines. Though not a massive move to pursue sustainability, the reporting trend is nevertheless on the horizon.

Everbright has followed this trend, adding a corporate social responsibility section to its 2010 report. However, details on its environmental performance are vague. For example, the report claims Everbright’s “emission standard of waste-to-energy projects is above the national standard” but contains no performance data or third party verification information.

Given the paucity of corporate disclosed information, one can turn to independent parties to see what they have to say about Everbright. Investment bank CLSA put out a Corporate Governance Report (pdf) in 2010 that examined listed companies across Asia. CLSA ranked China Everbright as one of worst performers in the category of corporate social responsibility.

The verdict is out on whether Everbright performs within its claims, or according to legal requirements, owing to a distressing lack of evidence to make a judgment one way or the other.

In light of its overall murky environmental record, ADB’s Everbright loan is that much more worrisome.

Dirty Growth “By Any Other Name” Is Not Necessarily Clean

In coming years, the story on the ground may well reveal what the reports do not. Since 2009, citizen groups have become more vocal in their opposition of waste-to-energy plants, which they view as dangerous to public health. In a handful of instances, protests have resulted in the postponement of new projects or plant expansions.

China’s solar sector also offers a powerful lesson in the potential environmental hazards of supposedly “green” cleantech industries. As early as 2008, reports suggested that Chinese manufacturers of solar panel components were dumping toxic byproducts on surrounding farmland. Unchecked operations continued, while neighboring communities stood by witnessing the degradation, their distrust mounting.

In the fall of 2011, simmering dissatisfaction finally erupted in violence during a four-day confrontation between Zhejiang-based Jinko Solar and local residents, who were tired of persistent air and water pollution. Days later, the local environmental protection bureau admitted to the state-run Xinhua news agency that the plant had failed to meet pollution standards for over six months. Eventually, the government halted the plant’s operations in a clear bow to public pressure, without which business as usual would likely have continued.

Amidst questionable lending mechanisms, weak government oversight, and flimsy voluntary reporting, growing public vigilance may well be the best shot China has at seeing that the promise of “clean growth” is more than just rhetoric, and differs significantly from the environmentally disastrous growth of the past thirty years.

Some of the latest news from the wide world of waste: 9 – 22 February 2012

CHINA

• Insurance Auto Auctions Paves the Way for Recycling US Salvage Vehicles in China

• China Issues New Electronics Industry Environmental Guidelines

• Chinese Waste-to-Energy Investors to Enter Lagos Market

• Difficult but Necessary: China’s Experience Exploring Biofuel

• Reverse Vending Machines Turn Cans into Cash
  

US

• LA’s Trash Industry Gets Ready to Rumble

• New York City Makes It Easier to Reuse Old Rags

• Hudson Clean Energy Takes Minority Stake in GSE Investment Corporation
  

• Plastics Recycling Rates Rise Significantly in the US

• The Business of Garbage and Recycling

• Mardi Gras Beads Cause Environmental Hangover

INTERNATIONAL

• Bed of China to Encourage Oysters in Dubai

• Africa: Domestic Consumption is Main Contributor to Growing E-Waste

• Jakarta Port Officials Seize 113 Containers of Illegal Hazardous Waste

• Fungus that Eats Plastic

• Rapid Food Waste Fermentation Developed at German University

China’s leading waste-to-energy developer, China Everbright, has received more than US$200 million vis-a-vis Asian Development Bank’s commitment to funding companies with above average environmental goals. It’s a great idea on paper. However, flaccid environmental reporting standards in China and worrying trends in the incineration sector reveal a moral hazard in international institutions’ move to capitalize the private sector. Growing segments of China’s population are beginning to demand transparency and accountability from China’s cleantech sector. Will principled organizations like the Asian Development Bank follow their example?

Part 1 of 2: Let’s Make a Deal

ADB Loan Signals Confidence in China Everbright’s Environmental Leadership

China Everbright International signed on to a US$100 million loan in January this year. It was the second one the environmental services company received through the ADB lending program. The first US$100 million installment, underwritten directly by the ADB, came in 2009. At that time, ADB also gave China Everbright US$653,000 in technical assistance.

According to the news, Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed China Everbright International will use the loan “to build multiple [waste-to-energy] plants of varying sizes in provincial capitals across the PRC.”

On the face of things, this news makes great sense economically and environmentally. Injecting funds into the US$1.6 billion valued company, whose core businesses focus on “green environmental protection and alternative energy,” will both improve its financial standing while also benefiting China’s environment.

At the same time, the loan framework dovetails with the Asian Development Bank’s stated mission to “help developing member countries improve the living conditions and quality of life of their people,” and its commitment to invest 80% of funding into five core areas by 2012, of which the environment is one.

However, though intended to catalyze environmental progress in China, this deal may instead be facilitating continued opacity in the area of environmental performance. Like almost anything, the devil is in the details.

To date, none of China’s environmental companies, including China Everbright, have committed to environmentally responsible operations, verified through reporting. This fact raises several important questions. First, through what mechanism has the ADB awarded China Everbright and other companies funding for projects earmarked as ‘environmental?’ Also, to what extent do we give the environmental industry a(n undeserved) pass when it comes to corporate environmental reporting simply because they are purportedly in the business of “being green?”

Private Sector Lending On the Rise

Traditionally, sovereign lending dominated ADB’s and other international financial institutions’ loan activities. In recent years, however, ADB has committed to increasing non-sovereign lending. According to their most recent Strategy Paper, the ADB intends for non-sovereign loans to account for 50% of its total China commitments by 2020.

In 2010, the bank approved US$1.3 billion in sovereign loans to the PRC, and US$587 million to private sector loans, roughly a two-thirds one-third split. Though other international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, have also increased their private sector loans, none come close to ADB, either in terms of the monetary amount or as a percentage of total financing. In 2004, for example, the ADB already held a US$100 million non-sovereign lending portfolio, more than three times that of the WB.

The loan in question is ADB’s private sector funding deal in support of municipal waste-to-energy projects. So far, just about every international organization has steered clear of funding WtE projects, given the public’s growing distrust and opposition to them, as well as well-documented technical and environmental issues associated with the sector in China.

Some of those issues include: the use of coal as a fuel supplement in municipal solid waste feedstock; lacking wastewater treatment of sludge drained from the trash; insufficient pollution control and uncontained dumping of the hazardous fly ash produced in incineration (see here, here and here for more on those issues).

In fairness, the ADB is not altogether unaware of its responsibility to mitigate environmental hazard through due diligence. The bank makes documents detailing environmental impact assessments and technical requirements for projects associated with the Everbright financing deal available on its website.

One of these documents  notes that funded projects will “not require supplemental fuel” and will “meet high environmental standards.” However, the documented audits the bank conducted were all done prior to the plants’ construction and operation. There are no documents on the website that disclose the plants’ actual operational performance. More troubling, perhaps, is the lacking indication that monitoring and reporting has even taken place, as initially planned.

Furthermore, the ADB appears to have washed its hands of the matter of environmental compliance, as per the project’s configuration. In the area of safeguards – the administrative mechanism for ensuring that the project, as a matter of policy, conforms to ADB’s strict environmental and social principles and requirements – responsibility for this project has been assigned to a financial intermediary.

In other words, it is the financial intermediary’s duty to develop and maintain an environmental and social management system, unchecked whatsoever by the ADB (despite their 50% stake in the deal).

In the absence of robust monitoring on the part of ADB, what hope is there for environmental compliance in response to regulatory or market pressure? That, as well as emerging trends in public opposition towards dirty growth, will be discussed in Part 2.

CHINA

• New Year Fireworks Spree Leaves Thousands of Tonnes of Garbage in Beijing, Shanghai

• China To Promote Reduced Paper Use, Recycled Paper

• Converting Food Waste Is Not A Rubbish Idea

• “Shanghai Swap Shop” Proves One Man’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure

• How the Rise of the Megacity Is Changing the Way We Live

US

• Green Facts about New York’s New One World Trade Center

• Waste Management of Arizona Driving Arizona State University’s Roadmap to Zero Waste

• Permanent E-Waste Dropoff Site Opening in Gowanus, NYC

• Fort Wayne, IN Recycling Goal Now Going to 80%

• Companies Try to Recycle All Waste, Send Nothing to Landfills

• Should Plastic Bags Be Banned?

INTERNATIONAL

• Tax on Plastic Bags Sends Prices Soaring in Saigon, Vietnam

• India Lays Down E-Waste Management Rules

• Can Hong Kong Solve Its Garbage Crisis?

• UK Retailers Fail to Meet Food and Packaging Waste Pledges

• Philippine Court Orders Massive Dump Site Closure

Is environmentally friendly scrap recycling in China a contradiction of terms? Read how converting trash into treasure without harming the environment may be the exception, rather than the norm, in China.

Well-versed scrap recycling guru and friend of NEEDigest Adam Minter (of Shanghai Scrap) recently penned an engaging piece for the Atlantic on the fate of US-deployed Christmas lights once the holiday tree comes down and the ornaments put away. Where do you think busted strands wind up? China, of course.

Having spent the last year looking at the flows and treatment of waste in China, I was pleased to see the issue of the US outsourcing its recyclable content overseas. The occasional articles I have seen until now have focused on the export of electronic waste to China, Southeast Asia and many African countries. While I absolutely think the environmental and public health consequences of this trade are grave and deserving of action, I have long wished that activists and journalists would look past e-waste.

For one, the gravity of electronic waste processing has not been lost on China, which officially banned the trade some ten years ago and has since introduced strict regulations intended to stem dangerous e-waste processing (though e-waste imports have decreased over the past decade, China’s domestic rise in electronics and appliance consumption has fueled a growing supply).

Also, e-waste is small overall compared to other scrap recycling / importing. Data from 2008 to early 2011 show a dramatic increase overall in China’s net imports of scrap metal, plastic and paper. Over 50 million tons of scrap paper and metal were imported to China in the first quarter of 2011 alone. A preference for imported recyclable material, due to its low cost and high quality, is often credited as a factor stunting the domestic recycling sector.

As usual, Minter’s illuminating investigative reporting is sound. However, I could not help but wonder whether the recycling practice he declares to be beneficial to “the environment, and pocketbooks, [of] both countries” is really so.

As  Minter points out earlier in the article, “due to environmental issues, the last of the U.S. refineries specializing in wire closed down a decade ago.” With this and other information in mind, it becomes clear that China’s sector is made possible by lax environmental regulation.

An Atlantic reader offered:

…if there is no EPA to take a baseball bat to the head of these companies, then ALL of them will go the cheapest route, which is to dump the toxic byproducts into the rivers and oceans.

Sure, it may be a stretch to assume that, in response to China’s feeble regulatory oversight, these plants are definitely polluting local soil, air and water tables. However, it is equally precarious to assume that the sector is environmentally friendly.

Yong Chang, which is profiled here, and select other processing companies may well be doing things in an innovative and environmentally friendly way. I wish the entire industry was equally green. However, studies documenting the highly polluting nature of this industry suggest that companies converting trash into treasure without harming the environment may be the exception, rather than the norm, in China.

Josh Goldstein, a USC History Professor who has written on a century of recycling in China, pointed out in a 2007 article:

The stripping of imported waste wire is the specialty of the Ziya area, and has been since the 1980s. Plastic casings are then trucked just over the border to plastic recycling plants in Wen’an district, Hebei; copper stays in Ziya for reuse in dozens of small local copper foundries. All these industries are highly polluting, but the most polluting aspect of this waste-wire reuse is the practice of burning the plastic off of thin gauge wire that is too fine to allow for stripping.  The grounds of unregulated yards are black with the soot from these toxic fires.

The outsourcing of our waste to China, though convenient and lucrative, is likely contributing more harm than good to the environment.

We as consumers play a critical role in fueling the trade, as Minter rightly points out at the end of his article. After all, curbing consumption, a sacrosanct utterance in the U.S., is perhaps he most efficient way to reduce disposal.

Additionally, recent controversy over the working conditions at Apple supplier factories (the now infamous NY Times article generated 1770 user comments within a week of being published) in China hint at the acknowledgement that we also carry a responsibility to be more conscientious overall.  However, my cynical guess is that most people feel environment degradation, when safely out of sight, gives little reason for alarm.

CHINA

• Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area Pilots Kitchen Waste Composting Program

• Beijing’s Biggest Recycling Market Faces Imminent Demolition, Threatening the Livelihood of 30,000 Workers

• Beijing Waste Separation Program Challenged by Resident Noncompliance

• China Looks for Ways to Detect ‘Gutter Oil’

• World’s Largest Metals and Electronic Recycler Makes a Move into China Market

• China Everbright Obtains US$100 Million Loan from Asian Development Bank

US

• US Air Force Awards Plasma Gasification Contract

• Austin Implements Waste Master Plan, Aims to Reduce Waste 90% by 2030

• American Sustainable Business Council Endorses Responsible Electronics Recycling Act to Limit Toxic E-Waste

• NYC Takes the Garbage Out

• Cleaning up The Old West the Modern Way

INTERNATIONAL

• Fight Brews over Puerto Rico Waste-to-Energy Plan

• Mexico City Fights Waste Pileup, Illegal Dumping in Transition to Greener Waste Disposal

• Virgin Islands Plans to Build Waste-to-Energy Power Plant

• Revised WEEE Directive Sparks Debate in the EU

• Think Two Recycling Bins are a Hassle? Try 34, as Residents in this Japanese Town Do

Construction Worker in Front of Sign Reading “Shanghai #2 Construction Co. Devotedly Builds Laogang Energy Reuse Facility”

The word Laogang might cause some confusion to China waste enthusiasts. Is it a landfill? Is it an incineration facility? Though the answer for now is the former, in time it will be both. I visited the Laogang waste mecca in Shanghai’s Nanhui County — some 60 km from the city center and neighbor to Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport — to better understand what is going on there now and what is soon to come.

Laogang Landfill and Landfill Gas Utilization / Energy Recovery Facility

Laogang is home to China (and Asia)’s largest landfill, operational since 1989. Laogang landfill currently serves as Shanghai’s main disposal site for municipal solid waste (MSW), accepting between 8,000-10,000 tons of trash daily from 11 of Shanghai’s districts.

Laogang landfill occupies an area 4.2 km (2.6 mi) long by .8 km (.5 mi) wide.

Laogang Landfill, in the distance

In 2006, Laogang landfill was equipped with landfill gas capture and electricity generation equipment, financed by the Asia Development Bank under its Asia Pacific Carbon Fund. In total, more than USD 60  million was used for the project.

Laogang’s 12 electricity-generating turbines have a capacity of 15 megawatts (MW) and generate 110 million kWh of electricity annually. On paper, that’s enough to power over 61,000 Shanghai households every year.

The Laogang LFG scheme was initiated under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a feature of the Kyoto Protocol. Under this framework, Laogang generates carbon credits for each ton of carbon dioxide avoided through methane capture. Laogang gets money for the (expected) carbon credits, and financing for the upgrade. The purchasing party — in this case, Sweden — gets closer to meeting its Kyoto Protocol CO2 abatement commitment. Laogang landfill is expected to continue generating credits until 2031, under the original terms of the project.

Laogang landfill is owned and operated by Shanghai Municipal Solid Waste Utilization Company, a special purpose joint venture between foreign partners Veolia Environmental Services and CITIC (a state-owned investment company) and local partner Shanghai Chengtou.

Laogang Waste-to-Energy Facility

Adjacent to Laogang Landfill stands the construction site of the future Laogang waste-to-energy (WtE) facility. Construction on Laogang WtE plant is expected to conclude by 2012, with operation commencing in June, 2013.

Laogang WtE Facility, Under Construction

When finished, Laogang WtE plant will be the largest incineration facility in the world, capable of handling 3,000 tons of MSW a day. It will do this using 4 lines of grate incinerators, each with a 750 t/d capacity.

Waste will be barged in from transfer stations, then loaded onto trucks and taken to the facility. In the beginning, the trash will be loosely loaded on the barges, but eventually it will be barged in in containers for easier transfer.

According to conversations I had with partners involved in the project, there is a long-term plan to build a canal channel that leads directly to the facility, cutting out the need for the additional step of transfer to trucks only a few kilometers from the plant.

This would be a wise decision that would save significant costs and fossil fuel emissions. There are no specific details available on when the necessary water transportation infrastructure might be added to Laogang WtE Plant.

The facility will have an electrical capacity of 60 MW (two 30 MW turbines), well over twice the size of Shanghai Jiangqiao WtE plant, and will feature a dry and wet flue gas cleaning system designed to EU 2000 criteria (more stringent than Chinese standards). This is the first time for such technologically advanced equipment to be deployed in a Chinese WtE plant.

James Carmichael of Waste Management China Introduces Laogang WtE Plant Specs

Hitachi has been awarded the contract for the design, supply of equipment and technical services. However, the contract for operations has not yet been awarded, or gone out to bid.

Total investment on Laogang WtE is expected to exceed RMB 1.35 billion (USD 214 million).

The plant’s design includes a cooling tower, which will be used to lower temperatures on boilers and the generators. During the plant’s design phase, use of water from the East China Sea, only several hundred feet away, was considered. However, in the end the city did not issue the necessary permit for using seawater. The quality of the water may have had something to do with that decision.

Cooling Tower for Laogang WtE Facility, Under Construction

ANNUAL PER CAPITA MSW GENERATION

China: 692 Pounds (1.9 lbs / day)
US: 1,565 Pounds (4.3 lbs / day)

US a Clear Leader… in Filling Household Garbage Cans

The US is the world leader when it comes to the amount of garbage per person that we toss every year, throwing out more than twice the average Chinese. However, that pattern is beginning to change. In some wealthy cities in China, the average person throws out 3.3 pounds of trash per day, trailing the US by a much smaller margin.

New Policies Aim to Reduce Average Rates of Garbage Disposal

The Chinese government has introduced new policies aimed at reducing the average amount of garbage thrown away by almost 10%. Given the robust economic growth analysts expect to continue in China, it is doubtful whether China — as a developing country — can successfully decouple rising personal wealth from disposal habits.

Wasteful habits have already taken hold in China, and are made worse by lacking  consumer and government pressure on upstream manufacturers to design products that have more recyclable content and require less material use.

Will China go the way of the US?

What about the amount of trash we toss all together?

TOTAL MSW GENERATED ANNUALLY

China: 250 million tons

US: 235 million tons

China Overtakes the US, in Total Garbage Production

Due to the fact that China waste volume is growing at roughly 10% annually, in recent years China has surpassed the US in total annual garbage generation.

At the same time, total waste generation in the US has decreased marginally in recent years. Following an all-time peak of 255 million tons generated trash in 2007, US waste generation fell 1.5% in 2008 and 3% in 2009. In light of this, estimating current annual waste generation at 235 million tons is a conservative estimate.

Where does all our trash end up? Are we able to handle it all effectively?

SHARE OF GENERATED MSW RECYCLED, COMPOSTED,
INCINERATED OR DISPOSED IN A SANITARY LANDFILL

China: 66% (140 m tons)

US: 100% (235 m tons)

China catching up the US, still has a way to go

All garbage in the US is disposed or treated in accordance with modern sanitary standards. Though the development of modern sanitation sector has a much shorter history in China, only beginning in earnest in the mid 1990s, the PRC has made great headway in this area.

Nevertheless, only two-thirds of total generated waste ends up in a sanitary landfill or a treatment facility deemed safe by the Chinese government.

The rest — more than 100 million tons — is either disposed in an unsanitary landfill or illegally dumped or burned.

How much trash gets recycled in the US?

SHARE OF GENERATED MSW RECYCLED OR COMPOSTED

China: 23% (58 m tons)

US: 34% (82 m tons)

Does China recycle?

A question I’m often asked, with genuine sincerity, is “does China even recycle?” It’s understandable that people, even those who have been to China or lived in China, do not realize that China recycles nor the extent to which they do. This is because recycling looks much different in China than it does in the US.

Recycling in China dominated by the informal sector

Instead of recycling bins in individual households and at the curbside, China’s recycling sector operates outside the official channels of MSW collection. The informal sector, though immense, is not organized in any recognizable way. That said, trash collectors more often than not have extraordinary specialties and demonstrate a sophisticated manner of collection and sale of recyclable material. Informal recyclers more often sell their trappings to a middleman than to the manufacturing entity that can make use of it as a raw material through reprocessing.

But make no mistake. The content is used and not wasted, and this material has a real and robust economic value.

Opinions differ on the utility of China’s recycling sector

Some call this a most efficient use of resources, in the sense that these workers are not paid to do their work, yet they can still make a profitable enterprise out of it. Many city officials in China do not agree, and hope to eliminate the informal sector all together.

Still others decry the processing methods used by private sector entities to whom recyclable material is sold, which often do not meet environmental standards, thereby polluting nearby air and water.

Imperfect as it may be, recycling in China is alive and well. The introduction of better regulation in industry and efficient and humane policies at the city level targeting informal collectors holds the potential to build effectively upon an already strong recycling foundation. However, that is not expected to take place any time soon.

What about composting?

Another question that green warriors often pose to me is “does China compost?” A perhaps more shocking and discouraging trend in China is the decline of composting in recent years.

Whereas the method of composting is used to treat roughly 8% of US waste, China composts only about 1% of its waste. This is down dramatically from as recently as 2001, when almost 20% of treated waste (not total generated waste) was composted. Interestingly, the composition of waste in most Chinese cities is still very suitable for treatment by composting.

Unfortunately, current trends are expected to persist for the near and medium-term future.

How much trash ends up in a landfill (i.e. the kind that doesn’t pollute surrounding soil & water)?

SHARE OF GENERATED MSW DISPOSED IN A SANITARY LANDFILL

China: 38% (120 m tons)

US: 54% (132 m tons)

China landfills a great deal of its garbage

Like the US, landfilling is the primary means of waste management in China. Most of the country — like the US — has the benefit of having large expanses of land, many of which cannot productively be used for other purposes like farming. When you add the amount of garbage dumped in informal (illegally operating) landfills or those that do not meet Chinese national sanitation standards, the total percentage of waste landfilled is much higher.

Landfills will continue to dominate waste management in China

By the looks of the latest rounds of Central government policies in China (the 11th and 12th Five Year Plans), landfills are not going to go away any time soon. Landfills have been declared as the most preferable option for waste management in China, barring overriding circumstances (like land scarcity, incineration-preferable waste composition).

No country likes to see itself as a dump-loving country. However, the current and likely future reality for China is one where landfills play as prominent a role, if not more so, than they do in the US.

How much trash gets burned?

SHARE OF GENERATED MSW INCINERATED

China: 9% (23 m tons)

US: 12% (29 m tons)

Despite much buzz, less than 10% of generated waste is incinerated

Proponents and opponents of incineration alike would have you think that the amount of China’s generated waste currently incinerated is a vast amount. Actually, less than 10% of total waste is incinerated in China.

In the US, where incineration has been a well-established waste treatment option for years, the percentage is only slightly higher at 12%.

Incineration on the rise in China

The main difference between incineration in China and the US is where the two countries are headed. Incineration has been in decline in recent years as a preferred method of waste treatment, while in China its deployment is trending steeply upward.

Incineration still not appropriate for many Chinese cities

Nevertheless, incineration is not yet appropriate for many Chinese cities, and it will not be for some time. Though the Central government has mandated that 30% of waste be incinerated by 2030 — a year so far in the distance to most Chinese officials that it almost holds no relevance — several pre-conditions (like changing the composition of waste, collection methods and household sorting habits) will have to change before that goal is either sensible or within reach.

Since 2009, Hangzhou has implemented a direct system of waste collection, taking rubbish from apartment units and other collection points straight to incineration or landfills. This was done both to streamline the collection process and eliminate small neighborhood transfer stations, long seen as a nuisance to residents due to their persistent odor and attractiveness to pests.

The Hangzhou municipal government also hopes the new system (modeled after Shanghai’s waste management efforts) will minimize the diversion of recoverable resources from the waste stream by the informal sector.

Before, scrap peddlers – who transport obtained scrap and recyclables on three-wheeled trailers pulled by rather ratty bicycles – relied upon nearby, small neighborhood transfer stations for selling their catch. This was because the neighborhood stations often also served as processing and redemption centers, separating and collecting recyclables. As such, transfer stations acted as a critical link between the point of collection (households) and the point of secondary sale (recycling centers on the outskirts of the city). Lacking motorized transport, the informal sector would be crippled by the closure of the local neighborhood stations, it has been reasoned.

Why does eliminating the informal sector matter so much to city officials.

As mentioned in other posts, after waste has been picked over by informal collectors it becomes a significantly less combustible mix. However, by removing up to 30% of a city’s generated MSW, the informal sectors also reduces the city’s waste management burden quite significantly. In the eyes of many municipal officials, however, it is scrap peddlers and not the city that reaps the value of recoverable rubbish at no cost. In the presence of the informal sector, the city loses considerable potential revenue from resource recovery.

On a more basic level, municipal officials tend to regard the informal sector as comprised of dirty, diseased and possibly criminal individuals who, with ratty rubbish rickshaws in-tow, are a blight on modern, developed cities.

Neither Hangzhou, nor any other city in China as far as I have discovered, has considered letting the informal sector coexist alongside the public waste management sector. One way to do this would be to employ a permitting system to better regulate their activities, while extending basic social benefits to permit-holding collectors, in order to incentivize registration and compliance. To date, this has been implemented with considerable success in many cities throughout Asia.

Despite Hangzhou (and Shanghai)’s efforts to shrink the informal waste management sector, there appear to be as many scavengers as ever. Over the last two years, they have just become more resourceful when it comes to getting their wares to the nearest selling point.

In the apartment compound where a friend lives, the security guard saves the cardboard boxes, beer bottles, newspapers and plastic bottles generated by the building’s residents for at least a month.

At the end of the month, he and his wife (who takes a long distance bus in from their hometown in the neighboring province) rent a U-Haul-type truck by the hour and work fast, filling it to the brim. They drive to the nearest center that will accept their mixed recyclables and negotiate the selling price. Each month, after subtracting the cost the truck, he earns about 400 RMB (USD 63.50)  from his sales, nearly doubling his salary. Sometimes, he and security other guards in the neighborhood pool their funds and rent the truck together.

I spoke to him one day when he was loading his take. He affirmed to me that changes in the city’s waste management system were making it more difficult to make money from scrap collection, but that they certainly would not stop him. The extra income generated from the activity is simply too precious to him and his family.

Though his story is but one, and therefore not representative of every scrap collector, it speaks loudly to the impact, or lack thereof, that regulatory and system changes have on scrap peddlers, given their economic reliance on the trade of recyclable materials.

In order to make real progress in this area, NEEDigest  hopes to see more local governments deploying an integrated waste management planning approach in China.