China Leads the World...in Garbage

Ethan Goffman

As the one of the world’s fastest growing economies, China recently overtook the United States in greenhouse emissions and now appears to be ahead in household waste: some 250 million tons a year, according to Elizabeth Balkan of Emergence Advisors. She was speaking last week at Energizing China’s Waste, a forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Piled 400 feet high, Balkan explained, China’s trash cornucopia is enough to span 1,000 acres every two or three years, enough to fill up the Great Pyramid. To be fair, since China has four times the population of the United States, the Chinese have a long, long way to go to reach us in per capita household waste. Still, the Chinese experience has important lessons for countries seeking to develop, and those facing population pressures.

China’s growing mounds of garbage are another indication of the price it is paying for growing so fast, with insufficient governance and little local input. Unfortunately, China is handling its garbage problem in an environmentally reckless way. Although organic waste accounts for roughly half of Chinese garbage, composting has dropped precipitously, down to about 1% of household waste management, according to Balkan. Meanwhile, incineration has risen to about 20%; indeed, composting and incineration numbers have virtually flipped over the last twenty years. Incineration is not necessarily a bad thing; in much of Europe and in Japan, garbage is a relatively clean source of energy. In China, however, incineration plants are being mishandled. Although they officially generate renewable energy, these plants use coal to augment the burning process, necessary because Chinese waste is wet due to its high percentage of organic material. China’s environmental regulations also allow far more pollution than does the United States, some four times the amount of nitrous oxides and five times the sulfur dioxide, to name just two toxic substances. And Chinese enforcement of regulations is problematic. For instance, the law calls for no more than 20% of feedstock in incinerator plants to be coal or gas, yet the actual numbers are often 50% and can reach 70%, according to Balkan. In addition, the burnt trash leaves a residue of 10% toxic fly ash, as well as wastewater sludge. Nevertheless, these plants are given tax breaks as renewable facilities.

China’s history of garbage regulation is very short; before 1990, there was none, and very little before 2000. With urbanization and consumerism, government intervention has become increasingly necessary. However, effective means of handling garbage had already evolved absent regulation, in the form of composting, largely in the countryside, and private recycling, largely in the cities. In Beijing, there is one waste picker for every 100 people, according to Chen Liwen of the Chinese environmental group Green Beagle, who also spoke at the forum. Unfortunately, in its most recent five-year plan, the government has prioritized incineration and discouraged composting, due partly to the stench. Yet if done properly, composting does not stink according to Liwen, who remembers growing up in rural China. Because the government does not support private recycling companies, these firms have been forced to move their operations further from the most valuable land, increasing costs. Meanwhile, land scarcity has also driven up the cost of landfills, leading the government to favor incineration. Without proper treatment and regulation, however, the pollution from trash incineration is devastating to local communities.

What would be a better policy? It would be useful to draw up a priority list of what methods are most useful in which situation. Fortunately, in the article “Incineration: A Dangerous Policy Option for China’s Municipal Solid Waste,” Zhao Ang and Mao Da have begun to do so: “for the most benefit in the long run, Chinese cities should first prioritize source reduction, separation, recovery, and recycling. Anaerobic digesting and composting should be the next priority and current landfills must be better managed….Finally, incineration should be an option only if an efficient separation and recycling system is established and emission of incinerators is effectively regulated.” Such an environmentally responsible list, however, might run up against financial concerns and short-term thinking. Getting it implemented is the hard part.

Priorities also depend on how effectively technology is used. Incineration may have quickly and deservedly developed a bad reputation in China; yet, in the form of waste-to-energy plants, it has worked in Europe and Japan. Denmark, for instance, generates about 20% of its energy from garbage plants, according to Edward Humes in his book Garbology. He writes that Danish garbage plants are “so clean that they exceed European pollution standards (generally stricter than the U.S.) by a factor of ten.” Yet the United States suffered environmental problems from large-scale waste-to-energy plants in the 1980s, which performed poorly compared to Denmark’s smaller, cleaner, community-oriented facilities. Opponents of trash plants also point to recycling as a better way to handle garbage. In reality, though, the two can work together; the most recyclable trash can first be separated, with remaining garbage going to waste-to-energy. In China, however, as in the United States, botched use of a technology may create resistance to future, more responsible use.  Additionally, both countries may currently be incapable of subtle and nuanced environmental action in the way that Denmark carries it out.

To achieve environmentally sensitive implementation, top-down government, with its singular emphasis on economic development, isn’t enough. Public participation is necessary. With pollution dramatically harming quality of life, China’s local environmental movement has grown rapidly. In 2009, Green Beagle joined the sprouting network of environmental organizations. Liwen explains the numerous avenues Green Beagle takes toward responsible garbage management: conducting and disseminating research, giving forums on waste management, monitoring compliance, and working toward greater public participation. In this, Green Beagle mirrors such organization as the Sierra Club in the United States; environmental regulation from the top down only works with pressure from the bottom up. It could be argued that China’s environmental regulations have been a bureaucratic failure because they’ve only loosely copied other systems, lacked civic participation, and been applied by an unresponsive and often corrupt bureaucracy. China’s burgeoning local environmental movements thus act as the eyes and ears of the people. Groups such as Green Beagle could portend a happier, healthier future for China, if they are allowed to participate in the political system.

What, then, can other countries, particularly developing countries, learn from the case of China? Start by using and expanding upon those existing practices that work, as with composting and private trash pickers in China. Government policies risk unintended consequences, and can do more harm than good. Yet often the right regulations are the only way to solve problems. In the United States, for instance, regulations have resulted in a 96% decline in mercury emissions and a 99% decline in dioxide emissions, according to Balkan. As trash expands, only government policies are capable of solving the increasing problems; it’s just a matter of having the right ones. This means accounting for both local conditions and global best practices. It means prioritizing based on long-term needs. And it means effective government that actually enforces its regulations, stimulated by pressure from the bottom up.

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Ethan Goffman is Associate Editor of Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. His publications have appeared in E: The Environmental Magazine, Grist, and elsewhere. He is the author of Imagining Each Other: Blacks and Jews in Contemporary American Literature (State University of New York Press, 2000) and coeditor of The New York Public Intellectuals and Beyond (Purdue University Press, 2009) and Politics and the Intellectual: Conversations with Irving Howe (Purdue University Press, 2010). Ethan is a member of the Executive Committee of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Chapter of the Sierra Club.