Guangzhou's garbage sorting plan will require strict implementation

THE LEGISLATURE of Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, recently reviewed a draft regulation on garbage sorting in the city. Compared with previous versions, the current draft highlights residents' role in garbage sorting. Southern Metropolis Daily comments:

The draft regulation in Guangzhou has established several principles: Those who make more garbage will pay more for the disposal of it, while those who sort their garbage will pay less than those who don't.

That's giant progress compared with the current practice of many cities, which collect the same fee for garbage disposal from every household. That practice is unfair because households that produce less garbage have to pay the same fee as those who produce more. Besides, it fails to encourage people to produce less garbage or sort their garbage.

Actually, the Guangzhou government introduced pioneering efforts in this regard several years ago, yet they failed because it was too hard to calculate the cost. More work needs to be done to find the best way of calculating the amount of garbage a household produces and charging accordingly.

Besides, there must be a supervision system to prevent residents from trying to avoid the charge by disposing of their garbage via unofficial channels. Some cities in the Republic of Korea have a quite strict supervision system, in which cameras are installed to watch garbage collection sites, while residents are encouraged to report illegal dumping of garbage to the authorities.

Of course, that's only one of the problems that the new system might face. Even if Guangzhou adopts a strict supervision system, it needs to do much more job to effectively implement the new regulation. That in turn requires the urban management department of Guangzhou to be patient enough to solve all the problems that are encountered. However, the authorities are heading in the right direction.