Taking an intelligent approach to trash sorting
A worker handles a barrel of household food waste to turn it into organic fertilizer in Hangtou Town of Pudong New Area.
The weight of the trash and household information is shown on the screen of the intelligent trash collection and transportation vehicle.
An intelligent approach is adding fuel to garbage sorting in Shanghai.
A chip with GPS positioning has been embedded in each trash bin for residual garbage and household food waste to track down the waste sorting performance of each household in 13 villages of Hangtou Town in Pudong New Area.
Smart chips have also been installed in garbage collection bins, transportation vehicles and treatment stations, forming a whole-process supervision and management system on the disposal, collection, transportation and treatment of trash via the Internet of Things technology.
When a garbage bin is put on a collection vehicle, information about the household which the trash bin belongs to and the weight of the waste is promptly shown on the vehicle's screen via auto-induction.
Collectors then rate the sorting performance of the household into four categories, namely excellent, good, so-so and poor.
Both the trash bins and collection vehicle have been embedded with smart chips.
The data is then transferred to a big data platform.
"The movement track of each garbage vehicle, its working status, working time, the sorting performance of each household, their scores and the amount of trash collected will be shown on the platform in real time, providing reference for our supervision and analysis," Wu Ping, director of the Hangtou Town Operation Management Office, revealed.
"The smart system helps us grasp each process of garbage sorting accurately and in a timely manner. If an abnormal situation or failure in waste sorting is detected, we will visit households and educate them and order transportation companies to rectify (the faults) immediately," he said.
"In the past, there were loopholes in the scoring system of collectors but the layer-by-layer supervision system has stamped that out."
The garbage bin is equipped with a chip bearing household information.
There is a director at each of the eight garbage treatment stations of the town, supervising the work of collectors, and a garbage sorting director for every 50 to 100 village households, responsible for the promotion and guidance of garbage sorting and trash collection.
The town has a population of nearly 200,000, about half of whom are out of town.
The volume of wet, or household food garbage, and recyclable garbage sorted in Hangtou has grown significantly.
About 60 tons of wet garbage are sorted daily in Hangtou now, compared with 10 tons before July 1 when Shanghai's new garbage sorting management regulations took effect.
Some 98 tons of recyclable waste have been collected on a daily basis now, rising from eight tons before July 1.
As a result, daily handling of dry garbage has decreased to 110 tons from 210 tons, achieving a significant household waste decrease, according to the town government.
People who do an excellent job in waste sorting are rewarded with daily necessities like toothpaste, soap and rice under a green account scheme.
About half the residents of Changda Village of Hangtou failed to sort garbage correctly in the past, disposing of trash randomly into any bin, Wu noted. Thanks to the intelligent system, the figure dropped to fewer than one third within three months, and now is totally eliminated.
Those who do an excellent job in waste sorting are rewarded with daily necessities like toothpaste, soap and rice under a green account scheme where points acquired by disposing of garbage into the right bins can be redeemed for gifts.
Household food waste is turned into organic fertilizers after fermentation, which will be applied in ecological forests and for greenery at residents' homes for free, Fan Yeqing, deputy governor of the town, said.
In addition, kuaiban (clapper talk), shuoshu (story telling), short sketch and shadow play performances themed on garbage sorting are staged to promote trash sorting, he added.
"We received three months of training on garbage sorting, which helped a lot," said Wang Guozhang, a resident of Changda Village. "Collectors remind us if we make any wrong disposal."
"I sort wet and dry trash carefully and put recyclable and hazardous garbage inside plastic bags separately outside my door for collection," he added.
Wang Huixian, a collector responsible for 180 households' garbage sorting in the village, is impressed, saying: "Residents do a very good job."
An intelligent garbage sorting and public sanitation supervision and management platform is used at the Xincheng Road subdistrict in Jiading District.
Elsewhere, at the Xincheng Road subdistrict in suburban Jiading District, an intelligent garbage sorting and public sanitation supervision and management platform went into operation in March.
It merges construction waste collection reservation service, intelligent garbage weighing and terminal data monitoring systems and covers all 59 residential complexes of the subdistrict.
It records the amount of different types of trash collected, the correct rate of sorting, and the information of garbage transportation vehicles, allowing collection and transportation companies to adjust routes and arrange workers scientifically based on real-time figures, Qin Wenzhong, deputy director of the subdistrict office, said.
"It improves efficiency and makes the arrangement of collection and transportation resources more effective and reasonable," he added.
Subdistrict officials are able to analyze garbage sorting effect via the platform as well.
Garbage is dumped into a truck at the Xincheng Road subdistrict.
Residents are also able to reserve collection services of big trash or construction waste by scanning a QR code at the doorway, which is part of the platform.
"The aim is to cut the time that such trash remains at residential complexes and create a better environment," said Qin.
Earlier, the amount of wet trash sorted out accounted for only 18.7 percent at the subdistrict, with the rest dry, and the figure has grown to 66.5 percent with the correct rate reaching nearly 100 percent now.
The amount of garbage collected at the subdistrict has been cut by 8 tons daily.
An official with the Xincheng Road subdistrict analyzes garbage sorting data in real time.
Some 80 percent of residential complexes across the city are complying with garbage-sorting standards, compared with 15 percent at the end of last year, according to the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau, and 87 percent of working units have reached the standard.
The volume of recyclable and wet garbage sorted in Shanghai has grown significantly after the trash sorting regulations took effect on July 1.
About 9,009 tons of wet garbage are sorted daily in the city, an increase of 130 percent from the end of 2018, the bureau said.
Some 5,605 tons of recyclable waste had been collected on a daily basis by the end of September, a five-fold increase from the end of 2018. As a result, daily handling of dry garbage has decreased to below 15,276 tons, down 26 percent from the end of 2018.
