Download Shanghai is requiring an additional 400,000 households to sort their garbage and is opening 2,000 electronic waste recycling centers this year as part of efforts to reduce the amount of garbage produced in the city. The city is also formally implementing new household garbage reduction measures on May 1 that were approved earlier this year. Under the new measures, garbage will be divided into four categories: recyclable materials, hazardous waste, wet waste and dry waste. Residents will be required to sort their garbage based on these categories. The addition of 400,000 households who have to sort their garbage will bring the total number to nearly 2.45 million. By the end of 2013, 2.05 million households were required to sort their garbage. The plan has reduced the amount of daily garbage to 0.7 kilograms per capita from 0.82 kg, according to the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau. The city aims to lower the per capita daily volume to 0.66 kg this year, the bureau said. "The measures are an important legislative decision to improve the city's ability to sort household garbage. It alters and regulates local residents' behaviors of dealing with garbage," Gu Changhao, deputy head of Shanghai's legislative affairs office, said at a news conference on Thursday. "Over the past years, we have summed up our past experiences and learned from the practices of major cities in other countries, trying to make the garbage classification measures more effective," said Lu Yuexing, deputy director of the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau. |