Garbage treatment at Xishan Community

Beijing is a city under heavy pressure from household waste, as kitchen waste, which is the main part of that garbage, takes up 60 percent of the total weight. Now, communities are starting to practice waste treatment.

Since 2006, Xishan Community has practiced waste classification and treatment. All kitchen waste is turned into fertilizer after anaerobic treatment, and 20 percent of the total weight is recycled for re-use. The waste is reduced to 30 percent after treatment. Now more than 600 families in Xishan Community take part in the waste treatment, and the accuracy of waste classification is 65 percent.

Waste separation at home is only the first step in treatment, people need to roughly divide all refuse into two parts: kitchen waste and others. In a regular community, there is only one rubbish bin, but in Xishan, there are 4 bins for every building. People separate recoverable garbage, unrecoverable garbage, kitchen waste and plastics into different bins.

After that, workers of the community will handle the rest. They transfer all the refuse to the treatment center inside the community, and classify them again. Recoverable and unrecoverable garbage will be kept in the open air; kitchen waste will go through a high-temperature processing using special equipment. Kitchen waste turned into carbohydrate and nitrogen are then discharged into the air, only fertilizer is left at the end, and they will be used to nourish the green fields in the community.

Recoverable and unrecoverable garbage will be reclassified into papers, bottles and so on. The community signed a contract with a recycling company, which will buy garbage from Xishan Community.

In the future, Vanke Property, the management company for Xishan Community, will add a refuse treatment system and plan in all their new communities. This experience in kitchen waste treatment will also be extended to the whole city of Beijing.

Video: Sun Peng

Voiceover: Chris Clark

Producer: Flora Yue