Two Thirds of China's Cities Awash with Garbage

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As China undergoes its historic drive toward urbanization, it is also witnessing the rapid accumulation of urban garbage. The nation’s 668 cities generate an estimated 150 million tons of rubbish each year, accounting for roughly one-third of the world total, according to Beijing Review. Currently, as much as 7 billion tons of this garbage remains untreated, and two thirds of China’s cities have been inundated by rapidly spreading garbage mounds.

Exploding urban populations and breakneck economic expansion are two major contributors to the growth in urban waste, according to Xinhua News Agency. The share of urbanites in China’s population rose from 31 percent in 1999 to nearly 43 percent in 2005, and total industrial solid waste soared from 784 million tons to 1.34 billion tons over the same period.

The country’s capital Beijing generates 4.95 million tons of garbage a year, while Shanghai, China’s largest commercial city, produces about 6 million tons a year. This is roughly 5 percent of the national total, even though Shanghai accounts for only 0.06 percent of China’s land area. And the rate of garbage production in these cities is increasing by nearly 10 percent annually.

Decades ago, as urban planners laid out the blueprints for many Chinese cities, few could have envisioned the enormous waste problems these areas face today. In a haste to cope with the growing mounds of garbage, many have simply allocated new dumpsites and landfills at random. According to the Chinese media, in the suburbs of one municipality (unspecified for fear of reprisal by local authorities), airborne surveillance detected more than 7,000 garbage dumps larger than 50 square meters. This spreading out of garbage heaps in many cities has increased environmental damage and made treatment more difficult.

Insufficient technology for waste treatment has exacerbated the situation. Currently, 70 percent of China’s garbage is dumped in landfills or piled in the open air, while 20 percent is burned or fermented as compost and 10 percent is recycled. The country has only a few dozen garbage-fueled electricity generating plants in operation.

More to the core of the problem is the lack of strong waste management, and of a sufficient market mechanism to drive the various stages of the process, according to Shanghai Securities News. In most Chinese cities, environmental sanitation authorities manage and operate facilities for waste treatment, including garbage clean up, transportation, disposal, and reclamation. There is neither sufficient funding nor incentive to introduce efficient technologies to this government-operated social welfare enterprise. 

While waste treatment requires high up-front investment and operational costs, the top-down solution currently practiced in China is far from adequate for tackling the nation’s garbage problem timely and effectively. Successful trial cases suggest that addressing this growing crisis requires repositioning the government’s role with regard to regulations, subsidies, and supervision, as well as attracting more private and foreign investment, letting the invisible hand of the market do much of the work.