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Beijing is planning a minimally processed vegetables industry to reduce waste, the capital's agricultural bureau said.
Beijing is supplied 7.7 million tons of vegetables per year, but 2.3 million tons end up in the garbage due to lack of cleaning or simple processing before they are transported to Beijing.
Potato, carrot, sweet potato, and root vegetables are shipped with soil on them, and vegetables like Chinese cabbage, green Chinese onion, celery, Chinese chives, and lettuce are one-fourth unusable.
In China, 25-30 percent of vegetables are wasted, compared to under 5 percent in developed countries.
The large amount of vegetables also use a lot of packing materials. The Beijing Xinfadi Fruit Wholesale Market alone creates 33 tons of garbage per day and consumes 22,500 plastic bags and 10,000 cloth bags.
Therefore, Beijing officials propose a minimally processed vegetable base near the capital and promoting more processed vegetables in communities to reduce waste.
Minimally processed vegetables refer to fresh vegetables that are sorted, washed, drained, and packed in sterile workshops. They can be kept fresh for 72 hours in a 0-4 degree Celsius environment. It reduces the transportation volume of vegetables by at least 20 percent and increases waste disposal.
However, there is no unified national standard for the business, and even in Beijing, few companies have the capacity to process and sell the vegetables.
Other barriers also prevent such vegetables from reaching the tables of ordinary people, such as safety monitoring, the recycling of roots, peels, seeds, and wash water, on-site garbage disposal, and lack of refrigerated facilities.
The government said the solution is to build a minimally processed vegetables base near the city, and to improve the infrastructure of farmer's markets to create favorable conditions for sales. The city's agricultural bureau will also draw up standards for the processed vegetable industry.
Beijing now has over 100 vegetables processing and delivery enterprises with an annual capacity up to 600,000 tons, accounting for about 20 percent of the total production in the suburbs.
