US$60m invested for rural waste treatment
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-08-07 15:06

Beijing, host city of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, is to input 480 million yuan (60 million US dollars) in the coming three years on waste treatment in its suburbs.

Though Beijing has rid its city proper of garbage heaps and promoted pollution-free means of waste disposal, improper garbage collection and disposal is still plaguing the suburban districts and counties out of the Sixth Ring Road, said Liang Guangsheng, deputy-director of the Beijing Municipal Administrative Committee.

According to a recent survey conducted by Liang's organization,Beijing's rural areas produce at least 3,000 tons of household garbage a day, less than 10 percent of which was disposed of in anenvironment-friendly way.

In a bird's-eye survey, Beijing Geological Survey Institute hasfound about 490 heaps, or 10 million cubic meters, of garbage, mostly on the city's outskirts.

In a blueprint on household garbage treatment, the municipal government has said the city will promote environment-friendly means of waste treatment to areas beyond the Sixth Ring by 2008 and further into the mountainous areas by 2010.

The government is mulling increasing subsidies to the rural districts and counties to foster their waste treatment projects.

By the end of 2004, the city had spent at least 150 million yuan (some 18.5 million US dollars)building rural environment and public hygiene facilities, including 2,000 waste collection and treatment centers.