Residents in pilot communities have been making slow progress sorting household garbage, despite Beijing municipal government's efforts in equipping hundreds of residential communities with categorized garbage bins.

The household garbage sorting campaign was officially launched by the municipal government in April. The aim was to get the residents of 600 pilot residential communities and 30 percent of Party and government organizations in Beijing to sort their garbage into categories. Different types of garbage could then be processed in different ways, depending on whether it was kitchen waste, recyclable material or other waste.

Although the government's plan was to see each of the pilot neighborhoods reach ambitious goals by the end of the year, an investigation by METRO has revealed that many residents in the pilot communities are having trouble sorting and correctly disposing of their household garbage. Zaoying Beili residential community, one of the 182 pilot communities in Chaoyang district, has been heralded as a model community by mainstream media since it started garbage-sorting in late 2009. Green posters with instructions on how to separate the three types of garbage can be found everywhere in the community.

Almost all of the buildings are stocked with five garbage bins. Green bins for kitchen waste, blue bins for recyclable materials and gray bins for other waste. All have clear logos.

A check of the garbage bins in Zaoying Beili shows that some residents have started to separate their kitchen waste from other household garbage. But it seems they don't have a clear understanding of the need not to include packaging with kitchen waste.

Most household garbage inside the bins does not match the outside logo. Shoes and bathroom waste, which should be put in "other waste", were found in bins for "kitchen waste".

A two-hour observation suggests that no matter what kind of bins are provided, people tend to throw garbage into opened, saving themselves the effort of touching and lifting the lids.

A resident surnamed Liu who lives in the No 13 building put his kitchen waste into a bin for other waste Wednesday afternoon.

He said he has sorted his family's garbage for a while but prefers to dispose of his bags into bins that are more full.

"It can save the garbage collectors' energy and time, otherwise they will have to change more half-empty bins every day," Liu said.

Despite all the shortcomings, Zaoying Beili residential community is still at the vanguard of garbage sorting among the capital's communities, according to several garbage pickers who travel and pick up everything they can sell.

Huang Xiaoqing, a resident who has lived nearby for seven years, said the management of the community had made a great deal of effort to change people's habits, including sending out garbage-sorting brochures and deploying volunteers at garbage bins to supervise residents.

"And the government offers all the residents here 30 plastic bags a month for kitchen waste and gives each family two garbage cans to store garbage separately," she told METRO, noting that, thanks to the massive promotion, she and her family had been sorting household garbage for a year.

"It's environmentally friendly and it's not too much trouble once you get used to it," she said.

Many other residents refuse to sort their garbage, saying it just gets mixed up again during transportation.

However, Zaoying Beili with around 2,800 households is one of the few communities in Beijing equipped with its own garbage compressor, which helps with the transportation of sorted garbage.

Du Gui, who has been working at the compressing station since it was set up in March, said residents have been making progress.

"When we first started operation. We could only compress two tons of kitchen waste in a week because most of the garbage sorted by residents was not suitable to go into the 'kitchen waste' machine," he said.

Du told METRO, his station is now processing two to three tons of kitchen waste every day because more people are sorting their household garbage.

Wang Weiping, an expert in waste policy and a consultant to the Beijing government, told METRO that it will take the public more time to accept garbage-sorting.