Do you know how to throw away garbage?

Is lobster shell dry garbage or wet garbage?

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On July 1, the "Shanghai Municipal Domestic Waste Management Regulations" will officially come into effect. This Shanghai regulation is very powerful. Its implementation means that after more than 20 years of advocacy work on garbage classification in China, Shanghai has taken the lead in incorporating garbage classification into the legal framework. Simply put, garbage classification must be mandatory. Following closely, megacities such as Beijing have recently stated that legislation or amendments to garbage classification have been included in the plan.

Do you suddenly find it difficult to throw away garbage?

Since Shanghai is about to implement super strict garbage classification regulations, recently, the following motto that interprets garbage classification with "pigs" has been popular on WeChat Moments: "Wet garbage is what pigs can eat, dry garbage is what pigs don't eat, hazardous garbage is what pigs will die from eating, and recyclable garbage is what can be sold to exchange for pigs." Is that right? Someone has already told Mr. Tan, and the official announcement has refuted the rumor, and this summary is not entirely correct.

Okay, so how should we correctly distinguish garbage and throw it away smoothly? Today, Mr. Tan will talk to you about how to throw away these things that we are constantly producing every moment.

How many categories are there for garbage?

Attention, knock on the blackboard. The garbage we are talking about here is domestic garbage, not construction waste or medical waste. The latter two are strictly prohibited from being mixed with domestic garbage.

The country has clear requirements for how many categories of garbage should be classified. The garbage in our daily life is mainly divided into four categories: hazardous waste, recyclables, kitchen waste (perishable waste) and other garbage.

So, why do some cities not divide it according to these four categories? Because in the "Implementation Plan for the Classification System of Domestic Waste" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in March 2017, it was clearly mentioned that each city can "comprehensively consider the actual situation of local climate characteristics, development level, living habits, garbage composition, etc., and reasonably determine the implementation path."

Therefore, some cities have three types of garbage classification, and they do not include "recyclable garbage" in the statistics separately. Because in many cities in China, there are a large number of recycling companies and scavengers, who have already recycled the recyclable garbage before it enters the trash can, and it is indeed a bit wasteful to put an extra bin.

Compared with the classification of four types of garbage and three types of garbage, the emergence of "dry garbage" and "wet garbage" in some cities is more Chinese. This is mainly because in the process of implementing the garbage classification system, various places have artificially further popularized the interpretation and extended treatment of our domestic garbage. Simply put, the competent authorities hope to use the definition of "dry" and "wet" to facilitate residents to distinguish garbage. "Wet garbage" generally refers to kitchen waste or perishable garbage, while "dry garbage" refers to other garbage and some recyclable garbage.

Of course, there are some different voices and debates in the academic field about this definition. The root cause is mainly that in the eyes of experts, whether it is "dry" or "wet", there are some intersections in the middle that make it difficult for residents to distinguish, which will lead to classification going astray. For example, should a tissue with spit on it be considered "dry garbage" or "wet garbage"? For example, should dry peanut shells be considered "dry garbage" or "wet garbage"?

For these questions, Mr. Tan thinks that everyone can be tolerant. After all, although China has advocated "garbage classification" for more than 20 years, the classification work has only really approached the people's homes in recent years. In Mr. Tan's opinion, the finer the classification, the better, so that we can know what kind of garbage we produce every day and let us know the hardships of garbage collection and treatment. Moreover, this process not only exercises intelligence and physical strength, but also popularizes the knowledge of garbage classification, which is great!

Who decides how many categories of garbage classification should be divided into?

Seeing this question, some people may say that Mr. Tan is being naughty. Isn't this question a waste of time? Who decides? The local government!

Those who choose this answer are wrong!

Before explaining, let me tell you a story:

We all know that Japan's garbage classification is a world-recognized successful model, and the Japanese people have done a very detailed job in garbage classification. For example, in Japan, there are four steps to throw away a beverage bottle: 1. Remove the bottle cap and tear off the label; 2. Simply rinse the bottle with water; 3. Squeeze the bottle; 4. Classify the bottle cap and the bottle body and put them into the storage bag. Among them, why should the bottle cap be recycled separately?

Xu Haiyun, deputy director of the Environmental Sanitation Engineering Technology Research Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and chief engineer of the China Urban Construction Research Institute, told Mr. Tan an answer: export to China.

Before China banned the import of household waste plastics in January 2018, most of the household waste plastics recycled by Japan, the European Union, and the United States were exported to China for processing. In other words, because bottle cap recycling is profitable, there are follow-up technologies, companies, and even countries to deal with it, so there is a special requirement that bottle caps can also be recycled. Now, with China's ban on the import of household waste plastics, waste bottle caps recycled by countries like Japan are no longer used for export, but are instead incinerated.

Therefore, the means of subsequent treatment are the real driving force behind the real decision of how many categories of garbage are divided.

So, looking back at the first question, do you seem to understand a lot? At present, the final garbage disposal methods of each city in China are not the same. Some are mainly landfilled, some are mainly incinerated, some are both landfilled and incinerated, and some cities have recycling technologies for plastic, glass, heavy metals and other garbage. The differences in these factors directly determine how detailed the garbage classification can be. Therefore, how to classify it depends on what local processing capabilities are available.

Shanghai has issued seven sets of standards for garbage classification in more than ten years

It is understood that Shanghai's garbage classification work has not remained unchanged. From the initial full landfill, to the gradual incineration and composting, until now there are all kinds of technologies. It is precisely because of the continuous development and adjustment of terminal disposal technology that determines how the garbage is finally classified. Therefore, in Shanghai, the classification standards have been adjusted and changed seven times since the implementation of the garbage classification system in 2000.

Talk about classification

China's garbage classification has been going on for 20 years. To be honest, the greatest progress has been made in recent years. After all, garbage classification has really reached the point where it has to be said and divided: as of the end of 2018, 16 cities in China have issued local laws or regulations on the classification of domestic garbage; as of now, 46 cities in China have begun to pilot the classification of domestic garbage.

However, these 46 cities only account for about 7% of the total number of cities in China, and 93% of cities have done nothing!

At the same time, China's domestic waste collection and transportation volume has increased from 25.08 million tons in 1979 to about 226 million tons in 2018, from "10,000 tons" 20 years ago to "100 million tons" today! ! !

What does this mean? It means that if the "little thing" of garbage disposal is not done well, the improvement of the living environment and even the quality of life of each of us will be in trouble. So, "little things" are not small at all.

Because of this, Mr. Tan has a suggestion for everyone: Don't applaud, suffer or even entangle yourself for the "exam questions" of garbage classification in your mobile phone. Start with yourself and take good care of your own garbage can.

By the way, hum: "Garbage classification is the new fashion"! (CCTV reporter Yang Xiao)

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