Every trade has its showcase. But the display for Wang Ke, an industrialist in East China's city of Hangzhou, is not shiny or attractive - it is garbage, 600 tons of it every day.

What makes Wang proud of his enterprise is that it makes the largest waste incinerator in China. By operating a show-case garbage-fueled power plant in his home city, he hopes to attract buyers from all Chinese cities whose per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is over $3,000.

He has a formula, he says, for all the mayors who want to help provide their new middle-class residents with a decent, clean living environment.

His company, called Hangzhou New Century Energy & Environment (NCEE) Co, generates annual revenues of $13 million from selling its proprietary technology and equipment, and is the most popular incinerator supplier in the nation, with a 14 percent market share.

While its main business shows strong profit, another part of his company, the making of garbage incinerating power plants, is on a narrow margin.

In the Binjiang District in Hangzhou, the plant generates 100-megawatts of electricity daily by burning garbage, then sells power to the grid at a unit price of 7 cents, about 2 cents higher than thermal power.

Wang says he doesn't earn money from the plant as the government's subsidies do not always arrive on time and costs are very high.

The plant covers an area of 40,000 sq m and required a total investment of $50 million.

Incinerating municipal waste to make power is already underway in almost 80 locations in China, Wang tells China Business Weekly at a energy saving forum in Beijing.

"The amount of subsidies depends on the local government. I get $11 a ton from the Hangzhou government, while a garbage incineration power plant in Shanghai receives around $30 per ton. If the subsidies do not arrive on time, it is difficult for us to make a profit." he says.

He also tells China Business Weekly that his initial motivation to build a garbage-powered generating plant was to prove to buyers that the incinerators work well. The power plant technology and equipment, using three furnaces with a garbage disposal capacity of 200 tons each, are all from the company's own patented designs.

As garbage is not classified in China, most of it has low heat efficiency and high moisture content compared with classified garbage in the US and Europe. NCEE finds it is more suitable to burn trash.

The company improved on technology of incinerators from developed countries by adding a longer reciprocating stoker to complete post combustion. Invented in cooperation with Wenzhou Weiming Co, the innovation has been authorized as a patent.

"The technology also applies to countries in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia and Thailand as they have similar problems in trash classification," says Wang. We are seeing interest from them. The first deal will come out in next three or four months."

Equipment includes a large feed hopper that holds 200 to 600 tons of material sorted by type and a high-temperature incinerator that vaporizes trash as it comes in. The resulting heat can be used to turn a turbine to make 2 to 6 megawatts of electricity an hour. The energy can also be used in other processes like heating.

But because there is no winter heating pipeline in Hangzhou or factories in the area that need heating, the high-pressure steam turns the blades of a turbine generator to produce electricity.

Despite concerns that some have about incinerators, Wang claims that emissions from the units meet stringent European standards.

"A Ca(OH)2 dry deacidification plus bag filter is used in the flue gas purification device in this project. Flue gas flows out from the reactor and then goes into the baghouse filter for dust removal. Dioxins in the flue gas are removed by jetting active carbon to the inlet flue of the baghouse filter, "he explains.

City dwellers of Hangzhou generate 2,900 tons of garbage a day, according to the latest figures from local environmental bureau. About half is buried and another half is burned to make electricity. There is more garbage outside the city.

"It is not realistic to take trash from one city to another as it costs a lot for transportation," says Wang. "It is better to install a local trash generating power station. Generators can easily be transported and usually installed within two days."

They can be brought to where the fuel is located, rather than gathering trash and bringing it to burn, he says.

In addition to its installation convenience, "unlike solar and wind energy that more or less depend on the weather, municipal waste is more stable and perhaps the largest renewable energy resource that is available to us", Wang notes. "It shows two of the world's largest problems - how to deal with waste and the energy needs of our societies."

With the more preferential government policies coming out, I believe it could change the world, He says.