However, there are still problems recycling special waste.

“I know batteries aren’t biodegradable and can seriously pollute the soil, so when I change them I put the dead ones to one side.” Ms. Ma’s nine-year-old son loves his battery-powered toy car, and a pile of exhausted batteries quickly mounts up in her house. But there is no special battery bin in her neighborhood. Once she carried around for days a big bag containing several years’ worth before she finally saw a bin marked for dead batteries. “You see a battery bin on the street when you don’t need one. But just try finding one when you really need it!” she complains. “I think they’re not located in the right places. It’s so inconvenient.”

Established in 2000, Beijing Weiye Company specializes in reclaiming all kinds of used batteries, battery protection boards, and battery waste. But an employee explains that the collection service is only provided for large quantities of waste batteries. “If we collected small amounts from every household, the transportation cost would be too high.”

Furthermore, there are not many effective ways to reclaim solid waste requiring special handling. Fluorescent tubing, for example, is officially listed as a kind of hazardous waste since it contains mercury, but Beijing has yet to set up an effective system for tube disposal. Although companies and organizations are obliged to send spent ones to a special hazardous waste disposal center for treatment that exacts a fee, many simply neglect the rule and mix them in with regular waste so as to avoid the expense. Ordinary households are exempt from the rule; the quantity of spent tubes is too small to justify collection and so they end up in the regular trash.

In June 2010, a pilot center for the collection and reclamation of waste fluorescent tubes was launched in Beijing’s Economic and Technological Development Zone. Some 100,000 fluorescent tubes used in the zone every year will land here. This trial will explore safe means and effective supervision of dealing with different kinds of hazardous waste.

Sorting the Trash

Generally speaking, trash from Beijing’s residential communities is collected and conveyed by pedal tricycle to a local refuse depot, and thence by truck to a large treatment center. Most of the refuse depots, set up many years ago, are half underground and half exposed. “Usually they are no more than a pit, and you just can’t separate the rubbish,” explains Mr. Wang, who works at the Maizidian Beili Community Refuse Depot.

Indeed, because the majority of local refuse depots cannot sort different kinds of trash, the contents of segregation bins from the residential communities got mixed up all over again here, which was really demotivating for those residents who sorted out their own rubbish.

But Beijing is investing funds to improve the hardware and the systems for garbage collection and conveyance.