Xinhua Daily Telegraph

April 20

In mid-April, China adopted a plan to ban foreign garbage from entering the country. While proper use of solid waste may relieve China's resource shortages, foreign rubbish can only bring bad results.

According to the 2016 edition of the annual report on China's prevention and treatment of solid waste pollution, China's 246 big and medium-sized cities produced 185 million tons of household garbage in 2015. While the rubbish keeps rising, garbage classification is still at a trial stage. The influx of smuggled foreign garbage inevitably compounds the difficult situation. The import of solid garbage is forbidden, but over the past three decades, a huge amount of such rubbish has been smuggled into China.

Some of the garbage comes from morgues or rubbish recycling stations. The continuous influx is harmful to people's health and the environment. Although China has regulations to block foreign rubbish, there is still a long way to go as foreign garbage smuggling has already developed into an industrial chain with finely coordinated networks. The profits generated by processing garbage smuggled into China can be dozens of times greater than the costs. There must be specific measures to deal with smuggled rubbish and penalize smugglers.