A boy disposes of garbage in the Bund, a landmark in Shanghai, on June 30. (Photo: CFP)

Liu Yi (pseudonym), a female Beijing resident, has a source of joy these days - listening to her Shanghai friends talking about the difficulties of sorting garbage.

Is unfinished coffee dry refuse or wet refuse? 

Coffee grounds are wet refuse and the plastic cup for coffee is dry refuse, so is a plastic cup of unfinished coffee dry or wet?

Similar questions have been asked by Shanghai residents almost every day as people in the metropolis have been required to abide by the new garbage sorting regulations. 

According to Shanghai's first regulation on domestic waste management, which took effect on July 1, people who do not sort their garbage will be fined a maximum penalty of 200 yuan ($29).

This has led to a flurry of jokes on Chinese social media about local residents trying to make sense of how to sort their garbage.

After laughing at these jokes, Liu began to learn by herself how to identify dry and wet refuse, making preparations for Beijing's upcoming garbage classification measures.

According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, a total of 46 key cities in Chinese mainland are speeding up garbage classification work, and will generally complete their garbage classification and disposal systems by the end of 2020, thepaper.cn reported on Friday. 

Elderly volunteers

While patrolling near the trash bins at Xishan residential quarter in Shanghai at 2 am, 70-year-old Geng Dechao caught a man dumping garbage at a place that was not covered by surveillance cameras. 

"There are residents who knowingly violate the rules and throw away their unsorted garbage at night," Geng told the Global Times, showing pictures and notes of rule-breakers he had taken over the last 10 months. 

On August 6, 2018, Geng's community was chosen as a garbage classification trial zone, where residents have to sort garbage according to category and put them into the right garbage bin. 

Geng, a retiree, was one of the three volunteers at that time whose job was to publicize, instruct and supervise local residents to sort their garbage and dump it at a specific time of day. 

However, things were not easy at the beginning. 

"People didn't understand me at that time. They asked me why a slum like our place needed to sort garbage," Geng said. Some even pressed Geng to show them specific legal provisions regarding garbage classification. 

At that time, there were no established rules on garbage classification in Shanghai, which made Geng's work even more difficult. 

A lack of supporting facilities was another problem. "At the beginning, even if some residents sorted the garbage and put the garbage into the bins according to their categories, the garbage truck collected all the garbage together, mixing all of it," Geng said, "People realized that what they were doing was useless."

Now with the established laws in place, things have become easier. The volunteer team has expanded from three to 63, and now includes college students and white-collar workers, he said. 

"We also send volunteers to go to people's houses one by one and ask them to sign the agreement. Once they sign, it means the whole family promises they will not dump garbage carelessly from July 1," Geng noted. 

Beijing features

Like Shanghai, Beijing's many eagle-eyed senior citizens now have a new mission - making sure Beijingers sort their garbage.

Guangming Street in northeastern Beijing's Shunyi district started a garbage classification campaign in April, according to Hu Xiuyun, deputy chairperson of the neighborhood committee for Dongxing No.3 Community at Guangming area, which is home to 18 residential quarters. 

Nicknamed the "fifth largest intelligence agency" in the world by Chinese netizens, the "Chaoyang Masses" group has begun instructing and supervising people to sort garbage. 

Such groups appear to be dispersed throughout different districts of Beijing. 

In Hu's eyes, there is an advantage to having senior citizens do this work, as the elderly have plenty of free time. 

"The senior residents are happy to serve their neighborhood. They get along with most of the families in the residential quarter and are better at communicating than others," Hu told the Global Times. 

Compared with the previous practice of hiring migrant workers to work as garbage collectors, the elderly in the community have more authority and ability to persuade their neighbors to classify their garbage, said Sun Jinghua, project director for garbage reduction in Friends of Nature, a Beijing-based environmental protection nongovernmental organization. 

Zhang Yunxiang, a 68-year-old retired worker in Beijing, has been serving as garbage classification volunteer for Jinjiang Hutong, Xicheng district since November 2018.

Zhang is responsible for the promotion and supervision of garbage sorting in more than 70 households living in the Jinjiang Hutong and has received training by the neighborhood committee. 

After training, Zhang taught neighbors how to classify garbage and also why it was important to do so.

Every morning after breakfast, Zhang will wander along Jinjiang Hutong to see if any houses are being renovated. He will supervise the renovation team to clean up their construction waste in time.

"After all, Beijing's garbage classification campaign is still a publicity initiative at present, not a mandatory implementation. Publicizing it among households is the difficult part of our work," he told the Global Times.

Volunteer work requires an ability to communicate well. 

Zhang always gives his neighbors garbage bags provided by the community free of charge during his visits in order to make residents more open to learning about garbage classification.

"Unstable lifestyles and flexible schedules make it difficult to promote garbage classification to the floating population, which accounts for 20 percent of the people in Jinjiang Hutong," Zhang said. 

Beijing people are not as punctilious as Shanghai people, so strict garbage classification is more difficult in Beijing, according to Zhang.

Although there are many challenges, Zhang said that public awareness of garbage classification has increased a lot in recent years. 

A hutong, consisting of quadrangle dwellings, is a traditional residential community for Beijing locals. While they tended to be shabby and dirty before, garbage bins at the gate of every quadrangle dwellings have meant they are much cleaner places now.

Liu Jianguo, professor at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University, noted one of the difficulties involved in promoting garbage classification in hutong is the lack of clear lines of responsibility for residents, unlike in residential quarters, which have property management companies to regulate the community. 

Because of this, management work for garbage classification should be more refined for hutong residents, he advised. 

Past experience

Some Beijingers have different attitudes toward garbage classification. 

"It will be a great burden on my life to sort garbage by hazardous garbage, recyclable garbage, household food garbage and residual garbage and take out trash at a set time, on top of the high pressure of work and inconvenient working times," Song Xiaojun, a 48-year-old Beijing resident living in downtown Beijing's Xicheng district, told the Global Times.

Beijing launched a pilot garbage sorting program as early as 2000, adopting a reward-based method, Liu told the Global Times. 

"The work relied on the community to supervise efforts, but it had little effect as the supporting facilities were not updated," Liu said.

Currently, some neighborhood committees adopt a reward-based method to encourage people to sort garbage. 

Residents who sort their garbage get coupons from volunteers. They can use the coupons to buy food and other goods in nearby markets. 

With enough points, residents can get free daily necessities, such as tissues and garbage bags.

However, Liu noted that this method works for the elderly but not the young and middle-aged. As a result, he said the method is not sustainable. 

China's ambition

The core of the work is not only about garbage, but making a city more livable and environmentally friendly, and enhancing modern urban management, Liu noted, pointing out the significance for China in promoting the garbage classification campaign.

"The campaign and legislation demonstrate China's ambition to move toward high-quality development," Liu noted. 

Mao Da, a policy advisor at China Zero Waste Alliance, an environmental NGO focusing on the promotion of zero waste, told the Global Times that it is difficult to implement garbage classification as it requires a great deal of effort from residents. 

However, garbage classification is an important aspect of ecological civilization, which can promote the development of China's circular economy and regeneration system. It will also benefit the environment and public health, Mao said.

The high level of attention the Shanghai Municipal People's Government is paying to the issue forms an important basis for the garbage classification campaign, he said.

The participation of the government, social organizations, the public and academic community brings the garbage classification policy in Shanghai more in line with residents' lives and makes it more operable, Mao said.

Other cities do not necessarily have to follow the garbage management systems of Beijing and Shanghai in their entirety, but can adapt measures to local conditions and learn some methods which are suitable for their own cities, Mao told the Global Times.

China has banned the import of foreign garbage since July, 2017, according to a document released by the State Council, China's cabinet, in July 2017. 

Chen Xia contributed to this story in Shanghai.