Waste Sorting, No Small Matter

The policy measures are relatively blunt and unsystematic, making them unsustainable. First, the household waste statistics system is outdated and unable to provide systematic information. Second, there is a lack of a funding mechanism for levying fees and providing subsidies related to household waste sorting behaviors. Beyond the existing classified waste categories, there is also unclassifiable "other waste", and an appropriate emission fee should be imposed on this type of waste. Feasible approaches include: residents must use special garbage bags to dispose of "other waste", and fees can be charged based on the consumption of these anti-counterfeit special bags; institutional emitters can be charged daily according to the volume of waste, measured by the capacity of standard "other waste bins". The government should limit its responsibilities to formulating regulations, fund supervision and other aspects, and avoid unprofessional and non-transparent direct fiscal appropriations as much as possible. In addition, it is necessary to further open up the resource recycling market, lift all restrictions on resource recycling and utilization, and give full play to the roles of the market, society and residents in resource recycling.

Landfills and incineration plants are not subject to pollutant discharge permit management. Both landfills and incineration plants are major pollution sources and key targets for pollution control. Landfills generate leachate that requires treatment and discharge up to standard, and also need to abate waste gas, including odors and greenhouse gases; the risk of leachate leakage from landfills and incineration plants must be controlled, and such management must continue for 20 to 30 years after the facilities are closed. Incineration plants emit waste gas containing conventional air pollutants and hazardous air pollutants, making them the most important sources of air pollution. In addition to meeting emission standards for conventional air pollutants, the environmental and health risks of hazardous air pollutants must be controlled to a one-in-a-million level; incineration plants also produce leachate that requires treatment and compliant discharge, and their fly ash and slag must be disposed of safely. It is imperative to implement pollutant discharge permit management for these facilities as soon as possible.

As household waste sorting is fully launched in all prefecture-level and above cities, the following tasks should be elevated to a more important position in urban governance.

Pilot cities should take concrete actions and continuously summarize successful experiences. Although the work of household waste sorting has been fully launched nationwide, typical pilot cities are still needed to provide practical experiences and specific solutions to various problems for other regions. In these pilot cities, the top Party and government leaders must take concrete actions, formulate detailed and scientific plans, improve local legislation, and achieve results through persistent efforts over the years. Pilot cities should have their own characteristics, and be allowed to try different promotion methods. Comprehensive and systematic information disclosure must be carried out regarding the plans, schemes, implementation actions and effects of these pilot cities.

Separate the supervision and enforcement departments of municipal governments. This is the most important and urgent reform. As a typical public management work, the proper separation of decision-making, enforcement and evaluation in household waste sorting is the foundation for ensuring the effectiveness, efficiency and fairness of the work. The decision-making bodies of municipal governments should formulate overall and systematic policies, departments such as urban construction should be responsible for enforcement, while departments such as urban ecological environment and finance should take charge of supervision. Only in this way can the current institutional constraints be broken, so as to obtain authentic information, identify specific problems and find correct solutions in the process of promoting household waste sorting.

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