FILLING THE "GAP"
China has been encouraging food waste recycling. In January, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Strategic Emerging Industry Key Product and Service Guidance Catalog" (2016), and kitchen waste disposal was included in the "resources recycling industry."
Beijing is building five new processing centers in Haidian, Fengtai and Shunyi districts. They are expected to be in use at the end of the year and then Beijing's processing capacity is expected to reach 2,800 tonnes per day.
Nangong in Daxing district is one of Beijing's kitchen waste disposal centers, with a daily capacity of 400 tonnes. Every day, specially-designed trucks go to designated restaurants and canteens to collect food waste and take it to the center.
The waste first goes into a solid-liquid separator. The solid material enters the composting system, and the liquid enters the leachate treatment plant.
Zhang Yang, manager of the Nangong center, says composting is a mature method of disposal, and has to some extent guaranteed the harmless treatment and reuse of kitchen waste.
But he adds that the fertilizer derived from kitchen waste has limited sales channels and low market recognition. The output return is much lower than the processing cost, so food waste disposal still needs a subsidy.
The kitchen waste collected from restaurants is not purely food scraps. It is mixed with disposable chopsticks, rags and even glass bottles and other debris, which is a headache for Zhang.
"The non-kitchen waste sometimes damages our disposal equipment. Moreover, it has greatly lowered the quality of kitchen waste, increasing the difficulty of pre-treatment and affecting the quality of fertilizer extracted," Zhang says.
"We are responsible for handling kitchen waste, but we have no right to supervise the garbage classification of restaurants. We hope the authorities can take coercive measures on that."
GARBAGE SORTING
In March, China's State Council issued a plan requiring 46 cities to carry out mandatory garbage sorting by the end of 2020. Under the plan, all public institutions and companies are required to separate hazardous waste, kitchen waste and recyclable materials.
Beijing's Tongzhou District, the capital city's sub-center, will implement mandatory garbage sorting in public institutions and more than 500 restaurants by the end of this year.
Every day at 9 a.m., staff at Tongzhou Zhenchongqing Restaurant put the special green kitchen waste bin full of food leftovers out for the sanitation companies to collect.
"A napkin, a chopstick - even a toothpick - cannot be mixed into the kitchen waste," restaurant lobby manager Wang Liang says. "Once the recyclers find other garbage included, they ask us to take it out."
Liu Jianguo says the implementation of garbage sorting will be complex, requiring legal support and improved regulations. He hopes to see more detailed policies and regulations on kitchen waste disposal.
"The management of kitchen waste involves a number of government departments and needs a coordinated approach. How to ensure the classification of kitchen waste; how to dispose of kitchen waste more effectively -- these all test a city's management."
