The battery industry will be the target of a major central government crackdown on heavy-metal pollution, a problem that has made many people ill in recent years. The reinforcement of regulations in the battery industry will be the top priority. More than 130 villagers in Taizhou , Zhejiang province, were found to have elevated lead levels in their blood in the past two months, with investigators pinning the blame on a battery factory near their homes. Lead was also found in the blood of more than 200 children living near a battery factory in Anhui province in January. “The remediation technology for contaminated soil today still has a long way to go,” Professor Li Zhi’an said. “It takes at least two to three years to bring contaminated soil back to arable status … if no remediation is conducted, the heavy metal could remain in the soil for decades, and lead, for instance, could remain for 100 years.” “Lead-acid batteries, which are being produced and used on a large scale, are an especially big contributor to lead pollution,” Ma Tianjie of Greenpeace said. Although technology is available to recover 98.5% of lead from a used lead-acid battery, it had not been widely adopted due to a lack of financial support from the government. Statistics from the China Battery Industry Association show that Chinese manufactures half of the world’s batteries and is also the world’s biggest consumer of lead, the key component in lead-acid batteries. The government has encouraged people to separate batteries when disposing of their daily waste, but very few are discarded properly.

As Guangzhou seeks to reduce the amount of trash, it has decided to impose fines on people who fail to put waste in the right baskets. The regulations on garbage classification, which took effect on April 1, requires residents and organizations to put garbage into four separate bins labeled recyclable waste, kitchen waste, hazardous waste and other waste. A resident who fails to correctly dispose of garbage will be fined CNY50, and the penalty for violation by an organization will be CNY500, according to the garbage-sorting regulations. “So far, the issue of the penalty relies on spot checks, so it is more about deterrence and discipline,” said Zhang Jianguo, Deputy Director of Guangzhou’s Management Committee. Publicity, however, will be ramped up as more signs and TV programs will spread information about the proper sorting of waste. Guangzhou produces 15,000 tons of garbage daily. Guo Weiqing, Professor with Sun Yat-Sen University, said that the primitive state of waste processing would undermine efforts to promote classification for garbage collection. The idea of rubbish sorting at the source has been considered by the central government for more than a decade to ease the pressure of the increasing amounts of urban waste. In 2000, the leadership assigned eight cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xiamen and Guilin – as pilot cities to launch experimental projects on a smaller scale, but none of the efforts led to positive results so far.

The Shanghai city government plans to nearly double garbage treatment capacity in the next five years by setting up new processing centers in more districts and upgrading technologies. Trash in Shanghai is now handled by 10 processing sites, with a capacity far below what is needed due to the growing population and urbanization. High-tech plants will be built in several districts. The expansion is also to prevent a looming environmental crisis in Laogang town, where the city’s key garbage processing center is located. The Laogang landfill center now handles nearly 53% of the city’s daily garbage. It has a designed capacity of 4,900 tons per day, but processed nearly 10,000 tons of waste each day on average last year. It’s expected that by 2015, more than 95% of daily waste could be treated and made harmless to the environment after being burned or dumped. Currently, only about 85% of Shanghai’s nearly 20,000 tons of daily trash is treated to reduce pollution. Quality treatment capacity of daily garbage is aimed to improve from 11,150 tons per day to 27,000 tons in five years.

70% of recoverable waste is being collected in 55 cities for recycling, up from 40% in 2006, due to a national pilot program aimed at promoting a circular economy, said Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Zengwei. He added that the program will be extended to an additional 10 cities this year. Under the project, CNY1.75 billion has been invested in the establishment of 33,000 community waste recovery sites, 181 sorting centers and 36 large regional terminal markets for the recovery of renewable resources. About 140 million tons of renewable resources was processed in 2009, which translated into CNY500 billion in value, double the amount in 2006. The program has also boosted the development of a large number of waste recovery companies, estimated to total around 100,000, which provide jobs for 18 million people, said Jiang. “As a country with such a large population and so few resources, we have no other way but to save what we have by promoting waste recovery and recycling,” he added. Jiang also warned that the central government’s financial support for the pilot cities will be revoked if they are found to have failed in their implementation of the program or have embezzled funds designated for it. Shanghai, a national leader in waste recovery and recycling, collected 7.2 million tons of renewable resources in 2010, up by 24% on the previous year, the China Daily reports.

At least 2,400 families living in a government-subsidized housing community in Wuhan have been receiving free recycled water since late March, thanks to a program run by Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev). The waste water from its production facilities is treated to enable its use in fire-fighting, washrooms and for watering flowers. “This program is the world’s first involving a beer company providing social responsibility services to the community,” said Wang Renrong, AB InBev’s Vice President for the Asia Pacific. The program was launched on March 22, World Water Day. A total of 4,000 tons a day is processed ― 1,000 for the brewery’s use, 1,000 for the community and 2,000 for other companies in a nearby industrial park. The company has invested CNY17.9 million since December 2010 in water-purifying equipment, joint work with the local government and about 3,000 meters of pipelines that connect the Wuhan factory with the local community and industrial park. “AB InBev’s program shows how a city could develop sustainably despite industrialization,” Li Shiwei, Secretary of Hanyang District’s Party Committee, said. He Yong, Deputy Secretary General of the China Alcoholic Industry Association, said the program “set a useful model” for other companies in the industry, because 95% of Chinese beer companies recycled their waste water but currently most of the recycled water is discharged into rivers, lakes and oceans. Wang said AB InBev is considering extending its experience in Wuhan to its other 32 factories across China. Wang also said AB InBev China held a presentation about the pilot program at the company’s global best practice meeting in Argentina. AB InBev China reduced its water usage in 2010 by 16.5% year-on-year. The Wuhan factory cut back the most with a 38.4% saving compared with 2009, the China Daily reports.