How do you deal with kitchen waste, which is mainly vegetable leaves, leftovers, egg shells, and fruit peels, at home? When throwing them into the trash can, do you scientifically classify them with other garbage? If kitchen waste is separated correctly, it can not only reduce odor, but also achieve recycling such as composting. However, since Beijing began to promote garbage sorting on a large scale in 2009, the combined garbage sorting bins set up on the streets and in residential areas have still had the problem of mixed loading for seven years. An industry insider engaged in garbage recycling said that the kitchen waste separated from Beijing residents' homes is less than 10% of the actual amount generated.

Household garbage kitchen waste accounts for half

Ms. Zhang, who lives in Nongguangli, Chaoyang District, has a family of five. In addition to her, there are her husband, her 4-year-old daughter Tiantian, and the child's grandparents. For breakfast, grandma cooked a pot of noodles, and Tiantian had about 1 liang left and thrown away; for lunch, the old couple made cold cucumber and celery fried meat, with about 2 liang of celery leaves and cucumber peels; for dinner, there were 3 dishes and 1 soup, including winter melon and pork ribs soup, water spinach, pepper fried meat and tomato scrambled eggs. 5 liang of bones and 4 liang of vegetable leaves and peels were removed, plus some mango peels and apple peels, and the kitchen waste generated by Ms. Zhang's family was about 1.5 jin.

However, this is not all the garbage: Grandpa loves to smoke, and he threw the entire packaging box into the garbage bag casually. The express packaging bag that Ms. Zhang just received was also thrown into the garbage bag along with the banana peel that Tiantian had just eaten...Usually after dinner, Ms. Zhang would integrate about 4 jin of garbage into a large garbage bag. Usually, Ms. Zhang would throw the garbage bag into whichever garbage bin had space, and never paid attention to whether garbage classification was achieved.

The way Ms. Zhang's family handles domestic garbage is also happening in the daily lives of most citizens. According to calculations, one person produces an average of 1 kg of garbage per day. Based on an average of 2.5 people per family, a family produces an average of 2.5 kg of garbage per day, of which about half are kitchen waste such as vegetable leaves, leftovers, fruit peels, eggshells, tea dregs, bones, etc., and these kitchen wastes have not been effectively separated and recycled.

Why is it difficult to separate kitchen waste

Reason 1

Too troublesome

You have to do a "multiple choice" when throwing away garbage

In many communities and street trash can stations, residents can generally see three types of trash cans: green for kitchen waste, blue for recyclables, and black for non-recyclables.

Yesterday at noon, the temperature was approaching 30 degrees Celsius. In Jianxinyuan Community, Fengtai District, a lady walked out of the unit door carrying a bag of garbage. There were three colored buckets in front of her, but the lady did not carefully identify the recycling function of the trash can, but opened a lid at random and threw it in directly. "Three of them are placed together. How can I know which one to choose? It's just throwing away garbage. Why make it so complicated?" For many people, when there are two choices in front of them, it is easy to choose either one or the other. However, if there are more than three choices, the difficulty will increase sharply, and they don't know which one to choose. The same is true for garbage classification. If you don't know which one to throw in, just throw it randomly. In Xiushuiyuan Community, Chaoyang District, there are several classified garbage bin stations, with three colors of garbage bins in a group. The reporter looked through the three colors of garbage bins respectively. There was a "mixed bag" in the bins, including glass fragments, plastic bottles, plastic bags, food and other garbage, with no signs of classification at all. After a while, two cleaners came to the bins. They poured out the garbage in the kitchen waste bins, sorted them slowly, and then put them into the kitchen waste bins on the tricycles they pushed. "We are responsible for garbage sorting. We take out what residents throw into the bin and sort it into kitchen waste and recyclable waste. We send the kitchen waste to the garbage station, and other garbage is collected by people in the community." The cleaner said that it is rare to see residents correctly sorting garbage.

Reason 2

After sorting for a long time, the garbage is still put into one car

In a residential community near Century City in Haidian District, Mr. Li took out two full garbage bags from his home, one of which contained kitchen waste such as vegetable leaves and bones, and the other contained recyclables such as empty milk cartons, beverage bottles, and leftover environmentally friendly lunch boxes. Mr. Li threw the two garbage bags into the kitchen waste bin and recyclable garbage bin in front of the building respectively. However, he soon found that his efforts were in vain.

When the property staff of the community came to remove the garbage on the garbage truck, they still dumped all the garbage in the two garbage bins into one garbage truck. The reporter saw that the garbage that Mr. Li had sorted was mixed together and transported away uniformly.

"If others don't sort, won't it be in vain for me to sort?" "I sorted it, but will it be mixed together when it is transported away?" The reporter randomly interviewed several citizens, and they all had such doubts. In addition, the reporter saw that the garbage in the three garbage bins in many communities was finally mixed and dumped into the same garbage truck. In the eyes of some environmentalists, mixed transportation has a great impact on the enthusiasm of residents to sort garbage.

"Mixed garbage" has a high water content

Increases processing costs

"What if the kitchen waste is mixed? Anyway, it will be processed together with other garbage." Many citizens may not agree with the practice of not sorting garbage. A staff member of the garbage incineration plant told reporters that the water content of the garbage recovered from the landfill accounts for nearly 40% of the total garbage, and most of it comes from kitchen waste. According to the operating procedures, the garbage must first stay in the storage pool for a few days, and then enter the incinerator after the water is basically drained. However, during the draining process, in hot weather, the organic matter in the kitchen waste will accelerate the decomposition and produce odor, affecting the surrounding environment. In addition to affecting the environment, if there is too much kitchen waste with high water content, the cost of incineration will increase.

The staff member explained that the temperature of the incinerator must reach above 800 degrees Celsius. If there is too much water, it will take more effort to burn it to reach this temperature. In addition, if the kitchen waste is landfilled, the water in it may also pollute the groundwater.

Industry insiders told reporters that due to the drop of nearly two-thirds in the price of renewable resources in recent years, residents' enthusiasm for selling waste has decreased, and the number of people picking up waste has also decreased. The shrinking of recycling personnel has caused some of the originally recyclable waste to enter the waste incineration plant and landfill. Data show that the total amount of garbage entering the city's waste incineration plants and landfills in 2013 was 6.72 million tons, 7.33 million tons in 2014, and 7.9 million tons in 2015, an average increase of about 600,000 tons per year. "600,000 tons is equivalent to the annual processing capacity of a medium-sized waste incineration plant, which undoubtedly increases the operating pressure of waste incineration plants and landfills. Therefore, reducing the amount of kitchen waste mixed in and reducing the moisture and organic content of the incinerated waste can effectively alleviate this pressure."

Three trash cans reduced to two

Reduced number of misplaced kitchen waste

In order to promote the recycling of kitchen waste, Donghuaishi Street in Dongcheng District conducted an experiment starting in February this year, setting up 8 trash can stations among 518 households in 3 communities. Unlike traditional classified trash cans, there are only two types of bins here, green and black. The green one collects kitchen waste and the black one collects other garbage. "We first simplified the definition of kitchen waste and called it "rotten" goods." Liu Quan, general manager of Beijing Tianlong Tiantianjie Recycling Resources Recycling Co., Ltd., who was responsible for this experiment, said, "We told residents that anything that would rot and grow hair is kitchen waste."

In this experiment, residents only need to put the "rotten" goods into a plastic bag, and when throwing out the garbage, pour the kitchen waste in the plastic bag into the green bucket, and then throw the plastic bag into the black bucket to complete the classification. Every day, kitchen waste supervisors will come to the bucket to take pictures, check whether it is misplaced, sort it twice, measure the amount of kitchen waste recycled, and there will be professional vehicles from the kitchen waste transfer station to recycle the kitchen waste. The company has also opened a "Green Cat" WeChat public account to update the data, progress and problems of kitchen waste recycling at any time, so that residents can get feedback in time.

In addition, although the blue bucket for collecting recyclables has been removed, citizens can register through the "Green Cat" WeChat public account and use the app mobile software to call for door-to-door recycling with one click.

Yesterday at noon, the reporter came to the No. 8 bin station located in Building 6, West District, Beili, Huashi, and the supervisor, Master Zhuang, happened to come to measure. Opening the green bin for "kitchen waste", it was mostly vegetable leaves and fruit peels. Master Zhuang simply flipped through it with tools and found a plastic bag. He picked it up and threw it into the black bin next to it. "There are fewer misplaced waste today." Then, he took a marked iron rod and probed into the trash can. The surface of the kitchen waste just covered the fourth grid. "At the beginning, the garbage in this bucket didn't even reach the first grid."

The experiment has been carried out for 10 weeks. The reporter saw in the statistics that the total amount of kitchen waste correctly placed this week was 668 kilograms, an increase of 20% compared to 545 kilograms in the first week. "Although there are still many cases of misplaced waste, it is a long process to develop the habit of sorting kitchen waste." Liu Quan said that the experiment will be carried out for a long time and is expected to be promoted in more communities.

Our reporter Ye Xiaoyan

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