Rubbish Removal from Homes in Rural China

[pprendeville]

What's the story with waste disposal in rural China? My wife doesn't know how the system works. There is a rubbish pile at the front of the house and it's getting fairly big now with nappies and waste food etc since we arrived. There is no bin to put it in. I've seen some people inspecting it to see if there was anything useful to take away. Will it just remain there indefinitely or can I hire someone to remove the lot of it? I wouldn't like to see it being removed only to be dumped somewhere else (apart from a proper disposal facility).

The bizarre thing is that there is a lovely vegetable patch beside it and all the crap from the rubbish dump is blowing into it. I'm shocked by hygiene standards out here. Are people encouraged to segregate their waste at all or use compost heaps? I've tried bringi g up the topic but I get looked at funny.

[Kenny同志]

If you hire someone to remove the waste usually the best they can do is to take it to a landfill, but if the landfill is too far away, chances are that they will dump it at the foot of a hill or beside a ditch.

Actually in some places in the countryside there’re people who are paid to carry the waste from various roadside 垃圾屋 to the landfill at regular intervals. If the waste heap in front of the house you mentioned doesn’t disappear in one month or so you can presume no people are employed to take care of it and almost for sure it will remain there indefinitely.

I reckon it’d be quite hard to get rid of the rubbish in an environmentally friendly way considering its size.

[Kenny同志]

For what it’s worth, our household garbage is disposed of in a relatively environmentally friendly way. We sell cardboard, paper, metals, bottles and anything else that can be recycled to waste dealers, dump peels, unwanted parts of vegetables, and other things that can decompose in a pit near our house, and burn plastic bags and wrappings in our 灶, and in winter in our 烤火炉.

Edit: Some old clothes would also go to the 烤火炉 in winter.

[Koxinga]

our household garbage is disposed of in a relatively environmentally friendly way... We burn plastic bags...

No! This is not even close to being environmentally friendly at all.

Burning plastic releases toxic chemicals in the air, which is not only harmful for the environment, but for the people breathing the air near the furnace as well.

[imron]

and almost for sure it will remain there indefinitely

Nah, someone will burn it off eventually (plastic and all). Probably when the land is sold off to a local developer.

[skylee]

I tend to agree with #4. It is dangerous if you just burn them imho.

Disposal of garbage is a serious issue over here. Currently we dump our rubbish in the landfills but we need to find other alternatives. Recycling, charging and incineration, etc. There is great difficulty in pursuing incineration as people just object to it and cannot be convinced that it is not dangerous no matter what technology/precaution is to be adopted.

[Kenny同志]

Burning plastic releases toxic chemicals in the air

Yes, you’re right. But we use plastic bags far less often than urbanites and we burn plastics bags that can’t be reused only so we really don’t burn much plastic, fewer than 25 bags one month I estimate (if I take into account plastic wrappings, disposable plastic cups, and any other plastic materials and 把这些东西算成塑料袋). And I am pretty sure the thick vegetation around is capable of detoxifying the chemicals released during burning.

@Imron

yeah, that’s likely but that possibility doesn’t disagree with the meaning of ‘indefinitely’, am I right?

PS: “把这些东西算成塑料袋”用英文怎么说？

[xianhua]

The locals here in my current location of rural Hubei used to pay for a refuse service before eventually deciding to bin it. The system now works like this: recyclable items are sold on whilst any remaining items are either buried in the garden, or thrown by the roadside into makeshift dumping areas. The locals simply view any open land as ripe for property development and so may as well use it while they still can.

[Kenny同志]

Leaving plastic bags/wrappings lying about or burying them is probably worse.

[gato]

If this is close to the kitchen, you might have found the cause of your diarrhea.

[imron]

so we really don’t burn much plastic, fewer than 25 bags one month I estimate

So about 1 a day. Some plastic can be safely burned, other plastics when burned release Dioxins, which are carcinogens. I would be careful about regularly burning any sort of plastic where you end up breathing any of the air nearby.

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for the kind reminder, Imron, but there’s probably no better solution. As long as we don’t burn much, I think it’d be tolerable for the environment, and us as well.

[WestTexas]

Most people seem to burn it.

[Silent]

I'm shocked by hygiene standards out here.

What do you expect from a developing country?

[Shelley]

I think that generaly selling what is recycleable and composting vegatable material and other biodegradable stuff is the way to go. Burning plastic and disposible nappies is probably the best way to prevent disease. Remember that you should burn plastic and bio hazards at a high a temperture as possible, this is the way a commercial incinerater does it to get rid of toxins. Also have as tall as possible chimeny for obvious reasons.

We are in the UK and we use our fire in the winter to burn as much as possible and heat the house with it. Win win as they say:)

The rubbish problem is going global. It will only get worse as more people create more rubbish.

We must get a grip on the underlying cause of this and other problems of the world.

What the world needs is less people and more trees.

And no i am not a beliver in the one child policy in china, I am a believer in the no children policy in the whole world. We need to decrease the population. The greenest thing you can do is not have kids. I don't have any kids for this reason.

Sorry for some reason I diverted from topic and went on to have a rant on one of my pet topics

Just burn the rubbish

[frankwall]

I would say take it to some isolated field and bury it. Quite a shocker though! I wouldve thought that with all the money generated recently in China, they would have a waste disposal service, even in the countryside.

[abcdefg]

I wouldve thought that with all the money generated recently in China, they would have a waste disposal service, even in the countryside.

China's new money is not evenly distributed.

[Meng Lelan]

When I was at Nankai University some 20 years ago the back of our dorm had some great wall of trash and rubbish. It had to be six feet high all the way. I came back for a visit years later and the great wall of trash was replaced by an international student dorm/hotel.

[liuzhou]

the great wall of trash was replaced by an international student dorm/hotel.

Some of the über-nationalists would say nothing had changed, then

[Scandinavian]

Regarding burning plastic bags. Those made of polyethene are perfectly safe to burn provided it happens at the right temperature. But there are many plastic bags made from other materials.

@kenny2006woo

Thanks for the kind reminder, Imron, but there’s probably no better solution. As long as we don’t burn much, I think it’d be tolerable for the environment, and us as well.

this is like a drug addict saying, "as long as its just a little I will be fine". If you make a huge pile of plastic bags, they will never degrade, but they will not harm you either, at least less than the "little bit of dioxin" you will get from burning. Of course when you go to the supermarket and get a bunch of unmarked bags from the fresh food section it's difficult to tell what material the bags are made from, you could also be concerned if the plastic contains phthalates.

On the general topic of garbage disposal in rural China. I have not spent much time in rural China but the outskirts of the city where I live, the piles of garbage is a normal sight. As it looks, the difference between rural areas and cities is not how people get rid of their garbage, but how many people are employed to pick it up.

Inside the gated community we live in, people also throw garbage on the paths and when they empty their household trash it is often that they miss the waste-bins (which are plentiful on frequently emptied. There has also been notices in the hallways regarding people throwing trash from their windows. I wonder how much damage a toothbrush thrown from the 30th floor can make to a child's head.