The Maizidian Beili depot was in the first batch of refuse depots slated for a “green” transformation. The reconstruction started in October 2009, and the new depot went into operation in March of this year. It comprises three hermetic trash compactors. Domestic rubbish is collected and conveyed on battery-powered carts, then fed automatically into the compactors. Each compactor can compress and store up to seven tons of refuse. Each full container is taken away on a special truck and replaced with a fresh one, thereby avoiding the scattering of waste during loading and offloading. “One of the compactors is for kitchen waste, the other two are for regular trash. Recyclable waste does not come here,” says Wang. “The old depot was entirely in the open. There were loads of flies and mosquitoes in summer, and the smell was pretty bad. But now you don’t even see the rubbish, still less smell it.”

This depot is equipped with six battery carts and two refuse trucks. “The cost of transforming a depot is about US $300,000. In Chaoyang District alone, 60 depots will be improved this year, and 90 in 2011, all of them government funded,” says Deng Jun, vice director of the Solid Waste Department of the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Services and Image.

From Waste to Fertilizer

In order to move away from excessive dependence on landfill disposal, in 2004 Beijing set about creating process specifications for sorting garbage. Since then, many new and emerging technologies have been introduced to enhance rubbish disposal capability.

“We are responsible for dealing with rubbish from the southwest urban area of Beijing – up to 1,000 tons a day or even more,” says Xu Zhongxin, manager of Beijing’s Nangong Composting Plant.

The plant, along with Majialou Refuse Depot and Anding Refuse Sanitary Landfill, constitutes the garbage treatment system for southwest Beijing. Mixed household garbage comes first to Majialou Refuse Depot for automatic sorting, in which a pneumatic system first separates out light trash such as plastic bags and paper scraps before it goes through a series of screens for further separation by size. Anything under 60mm diameter such as organic peel or leaves goes to Nangong Composting Plant, there to become compound organic fertilizer.