If you have spent any time in China, and have taken a moment to look around, the fact that there is a lot of prepackage waste in China.
It was the source of inspiration for my recent post, Wasting Away on China’s Airlines, and the author of Garbage is piling up in world of disposables was equally inspired by:
We are not only contributing to the expanding and encroaching landfills, but also doing it in ever-more creative ways.
During my weekend train trip to Hangzhou, each passenger was given a bottle of water containing purest H20 from glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau.
I marveled at the stupendous energy consumed in shipping the water from glaciers to the bullet train – to say nothing of the devastating environmental impacts – and genuinely hope the claim was a lie.
A problem that is quickly becoming a very serious landfill issue:
Statistics from last year show that 125 million tons of waste were created in 655 Chinese cities in 2007, representing an annual increase of 8 to 10 percent, apocalyptically comparable to the GDP growth.
As 40 percent of the garbage is simply buried in the suburban or rural areas without any recycling, ever-encroaching landfills are closing in on two thirds of these 655 cities, which are themselves expanding fast.
“In Beijing, as existing landfills are all operating beyond capacity, in four or five years there will be no place to bury the garbage,” said Chen Yong, director of Beijing Municipal Administration Commission, in a recent interview with South Weekend.
With landfills that are brimming, I shutter to think of alternatives, but a few ideas I have are:
- Removing paper cups from coffee shops/ tea houses
- Reducing the number of over wrapped nuts, candies, and teas that are pervasive everywhere
- Banning the use of styrofoam containers
- Charging for condiments at fast food restaurants