I read the following article today and have copied and pasted...

I read the following article today and have copied and pasted the main points. The link at the end of this post will allow those who are interested to read the article in full from start to finish.

'The weekend before last, protests over a garbage incinerator turned violent in Hangzhou, China, a wealthy and growing metropolis less than an hour’s train ride south of Shanghai.

The protesters have good reason to fear the half-built facility: Chinese incinerators typically emit far more toxic pollutants than those in Europe and other developed regions, often with tragic environmental and human consequences. Making matters worse, they’re usually built with little public consultation.

The weekend protests — which resulted in 53 arrests, according to state news media — were merely the latest in a growing, citizen-driven movement against such burners.

According to a World Bank report, China has for a decade surpassed the United States as the world’s largest generator of municipal solid waste — the stuff that goes into landfills and incinerators. It alone accounts for 70 percent of the solid waste generated in East Asia.

By 2030, the same report suggests, China will probably generate twice as much solid waste as the U.S.

Waste in China still doesn’t generate nearly the amount of attention that air pollution does, except when it comes to the smog spewed out by trash incinerators. After all, once it’s picked up for disposal or dumping, the garbage is mostly out of sight.

This willful blindness is clearly unsustainable. Beijing is now circled by so many informal trash dumps that last year the city promised to license and upgrade 250 of them by 2015.

But even if they could all be licensed, the growth of China’s cities and shrinking of its arable acreage means that the country’s landfilling days are coming to an end. Incinerators, for better or worse, will have to pick up the slack.

China has committed to building more than 200 additional ones by 2015, more than doubling the installed base in just four years.

Protests against these incinerators are understandable. Past performance, poor technology, loose oversight and sub-standard regulations mean that such burners often are serious environmental hazards.

The harsh truth is that unless that public — in cooperation with Chinese government at all levels — commits to reduce the amount of waste they generate, the problem cannot be solved.

One approach would be to impose higher disposal fees on China’s individual consumers — not just the garbage companies — and allow the market to take its course.'


http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/05/19/commentary/world-commentary/trash-troubles-pile-up-in-chinas-garbage-era/#.U3tIQE2KDIU