Visitors to the Wenjiang district of Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan province are impressed with the clean environment in its rural areas.

It is due to concentrated garbage collection in the countryside, says Zhou Mingming, a farmer in Yongning town of Wenjiang.

In July 2006, the district government started the trial implementation of concentrated garbage collection and disposal. The next year, it started the project in all its towns.

Since then, it has invested more than 10 million yuan each year in the project. Wenjiang, which is the first district to start concentrated garbage collection in Chengdu, has witnessed great improvement in its rural environment.

The phenomenon that farmers throw away rubbish arbitrarily is nonexistent nowadays, Zhou says.