Food street now free of dustbins

Songdong Road food court of Zhongshan Community became the first commercial street in Songjiang to succeed in withdrawing all its dustbins as early as May. The over 700-meter-long food street, which used to have 110 dustbins, now has none in front of its 145 stores.

At 1am, Songdong Road is alive with barbecue stores selling fragrant meats and filled with foodies chatting and drinking beer. The more than 60 food stores along the road attract customers with different tastes, so its daily garbage ranks near the top of the district’s commercial streets.

In the past, kitchen waste from the restaurants was randomly thrown into roadside dustbins, which resulted in the detriment of the environment.

In March, Songjiang authorities, together with environmental protection companies, city management officers, property management companies and neighborhood committees, launched garbage sorting promotions and guided store owners to excel in garbage sorting.

“We pondered for a long time between letting store owners do garbage sorting themselves and sending sanitation workers to collect sorted garbage. Since adjustment to the new rule of garbage sorting takes time, we finally chose the later plan,” said Yang Guihua, deputy chief of the district’s environment and sanitation management Center.

On 9am every day, trucks from Shanghai Jingda Environmental Sanitation Development Co head for Songdong Road and sanitation workers collect garbage door to door.

The first day saw collection times for residual waste and household food waste take half an hour longer than estimated, with 25 barrels of residual waste and 45 barrels of household food waste collected. Most of the owners responded positively, though there were a few who piled garbage at store gates or roadside waste boxes.

“Garbage sorting is a good deed, but we are all new hands and it takes time,” said Wu Guoping, deputy manager of Jingyun subbranch of Jingda Environmental Sanitation Development Co.

“Songdong Road is a food street and it generates a large amount of waste even in the early morning, So we increase the garbage collection shift from the former two times daily to the current four times. Besides 8am-11am and 1pm-4pm, we add 8pm-12am and 2:30am-5am.”

Since the scheduled on-site garbage collection service was launched in May, the accuracy rate of garbage sorting by the store owners increased from 50 percent to the current 80 percent.

“Quite a few roadside dustbins used to be dirty and smelly. After the authority withdrew all the dustbins on Songdong Road, the environment here turns better,” said one resident.