Authorities report on first six months of garbage sorting

Catering businesses, hotels and enterprises had the worst performance in garbage sorting, Shanghai authorities said on Wednesday.

The Shanghai Urban Management and Law Enforcement Bureau reported on the situation of waste sorting in the city on Wednesday, six months after Shanghai's new household garbage-sorting management regulations went into effect on July 1.

Shanghai's urban management and law enforcement authorities imposed fines in 5,546 cases between July and December, including fines on 461 individuals, the bureau said.

Hongkou, Jinshan, Minhang and Songjiang districts and the Pudong New Area had the largest numbers of recorded violations, the bureau said.

Among these cases, 3,265 related to failure to sort and dispose of trash correctly, and 2,054 related to failure to install proper garbage-sorting containers.

The remaining cases concerned problems such as mixed waste transport, failure to report household waste according to regulation, random storage of household trash, unclear signage, failure to establish records of household waste, and unlicensed collection and transportation of household garbage, the bureau said.

In total, 81,000 inspections were conducted across the city over the past six months, covering about 12,000 residential communities, 230 household trash collection and transportation enterprises, 10 household garbage-transit sites and nine household waste treatment companies.

Nearly 160,000 institutions including shops, restaurants, residential complexes, hotels, malls and office buildings were blanketed in inspections as well.

In 24,629 cases, individual or enterprise violators were ordered to rectify their garbage-sorting practices, according to the bureau.

Restaurant businesses recorded the highest incidence of waste-sorting irregularities, at 20.3 percent, followed by hotels (19.7 percent), enterprises (19.3 percent), big shopping malls (17.7 percent) and office buildings (17.2 percent), according to the bureau.

In terms of container installation, transportation hubs and companies had the poorest performance. Shops and catering businesses were found to have the most problems with container signage.

Tourist attractions, hotels and hospitals performed worst in terms of mixed disposal, the bureau said.

The bureau said it would step up inspections targeting catering businesses, hotels, and some universities and hospitals in particular due to their unsatisfactory performance in garbage sorting.