A dozen people were recently detained for illegally transporting garbage from Shanghai to neighboring Jiangsu Province and dumping it in a lake. The incident highlights the fact that Chinese megacities are being overwhelmed by their own waste, a consequence of rapid industrialization and urbanization.
For Suzhou residents, the 2,400 square kilometer Taihu Lake is not only one of the city's major sources of tourist yuan, but also the source of much of their drinking water.
But a few months ago when part of the lake in Jinting township, East China's Jiangsu Province, was found to be full of bricks, tiles and other construction and commercial waste originating in Shanghai, which lies about 100 kilometers east, the dreamy lake became the locals' nightmare.
The gargantuan pile of trash, about seven meters high and the size of three basketball courts, stunk and attracted swarms of flies.
"We dared not open our windows, despite the heat. We couldn't even have dinner," a local resident lamented.
Starting in June and continuing for weeks, eight ships, each able to carry from 300 to 500 tons, had been regularly transporting full loads of garbage from Shanghai and dumping them into the lake.
Although the Shanghai government has rolled out a series of measures to counter this trade, illegally transporting waste to neighboring provinces is a growing business in Shanghai, as companies try to minimize the cost of recycling garbage in the city.
At the expense of Shanghai's neighbors, dumpers make the metropolis's garbage disappear.
Unknown origin
After the Suzhou authorities seized the trash boats in July following local residents' reports, the owner of one vessel claimed he had no idea what his ship had been carrying, and that he was initially contacted by a middleman.
"I can earn 2,000 yuan ($300) for each delivery, and I get the money once its unloaded. What goods my ship is carrying doesn't concern me - I am only in charge of transportation," he told the Xinhua News Agency.
Authorities later estimated that over 20,000 tons of waste consisting mostly of construction materials had been tossed into Taihu Lake, and detained 12 people involved, Xinhua reported.
The garbage came from Huibin port in Shanghai's Jiading district and Yujidun port in the city's Changning district. Workers at Huibin port said that the port has traditionally only been used to transport sand, never construction waste. The construction waste that was delivered to Jiangsu was sent to the port by middlemen, and the workers had no idea where the waste came from.
A project manager at a construction company in Shanghai told the China Youth Daily that they pay local management authorities 600 yuan for each truckload of waste - about three tons - as a disposal fee.
The manager said he had asked about the where the waste ended up, and was told that some is delivered to mass recycling plants, some is used for road materials, and some for the filling of deep holes.
Liu Dongsheng, an official in charge of construction waste at the Waste Management Office of the Shanghai Greenery Management Bureau, said in a recent interview that according to regulations, both the origin of construction waste and the location where the waste is dumped should be registered by the local authorities, but the construction waste involved in the Taihu Lake case had not been registered.
Lucrative business
An industry insider said that ship owners can earn double their usual fee by illegally transporting garbage. Intermediaries, in turn, can earn 30 yuan for each ton of garbage. When the garbage is unloaded, men who help find a location to dump the stuff will earn another 5 yuan for each ton.
Chen Yongnian, a crew member on a detained vessel, said a middleman contacted them and he has no idea where the waste came from originally. Transporting the waste to Taihu earned him 7,000 yuan.
Local authorities are still investigating where these middlemen obtained the waste.
This isn't the first time that garbage from Shanghai has been secretly transported to Jiangsu Province and dumped there.
In November 2014, 1,000 tons of waste were dumped in a river in Xishan district, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. An investigation later found that the garbage came from Meilong town in Shanghai's Minhang district.
Previously, garbage from Meilong town was delivered to Minwu port, where specialized ships would transport it to a landfill. But as the port was undergoing renovations during that period, the government had to sign an agreement with a transportation company to manage the waste.
"The government initially outsourced garbage disposal to professional companies. But some companies, driven by profit, just dumped it outside Shanghai," an environmental protection officer said.
