The air in Tongling, along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in east China's Anhui Province, was so thick with sulfur dioxide and dust that when Ni Yuping, a heavy smoker, moved to the copper capital in 2009 he had no desire to light a cigarette for the first month.
Ni, the mayor of Tongling, was so shocked by the pollution that he decided that something must be done.
The municipal government shut down the outdated First Copper Smelter, affiliated with Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group (TNMG), the country's first copper smelter, which had been in operation since 1953, as well as two 125,000-kilowatt power generation units and two 150,000-tonnes sulfuric acid production lines. It also closed 136 small plants between 2010 and 2015.
The acid rain frequency was substantially reduced to 3.7 percent in 2015 from 44.4 percent in 2005, according to the municipal environmental protection bureau.
"After years of hard work on pollution control and industrial transition, Tongling has become quite a livable city," said Ni.
No pungent odor was noticeable when Xinhua reporters visited Jinlong Copper Co. Ltd., which produces 450,000 tonnes of cathode copper a year. Automatic sprinklers have been installed along all the roads across the complex, considerably reducing the dust.
"There is not a huge difference between Chinese and Japanese enterprises in environmental protection as China catches up and increases pollution control investment," said Hiroshi Sato, vice president of the Sino-Japan joint venture.
Tongling has a copper production history that spans over 3,000 years, and efforts to upgrade the sector, and find new growth drivers, were pressing. To this end, the deep processing of copper, energy conservation, environmental protection and new energy development were among the sectors identified as having the potential to drive future prosperity.
The Rare and Precious Metals Co., a TNMG affiliate that replaced the First Copper Smelter, produced 13 tonnes of gold and 460 tonnes of silver out of the copper slags in 2015, increasing resource utilization efficiency and extending the value chain.
Moreover, the city outsourced its household refuse treatment to Anhui (Tongling) Conch Cement Co. Ltd., and transformed the city's former landfill into a park.
In the past six years, more than 600,000 tonnes of household waste was incinerated in the company's cement kilns at temperatures exceeding 900 degrees, which can eliminate dioxin, a carcinogenic chemical and the biggest concern of garbage incineration.
Meanwhile, the cement company produced 500 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 2015 from the heat generated by the kilns, providing 45 percent of its power consumption, said Liu Qingxin, executive deputy general manger of the company.
TNMG, China's largest cathode copper producer, will cut its annual production from 1.31 million tonnes to 1.22 million tonnes as the price of copper continues to fall.
To create new engines of growth, it expects to start a copper foil program by the end of the year and produce 20,000 tonnes annually to cater for the booming green car market.
The copper foil will be used for batteries for tens of thousands of electric buses and cars, said Ding Shiqi, deputy general manager of TNMG.
