Beijing faces a “garbage crisis” as an increasing volume of rubbish threatens to overwhelm the capital’s existing landfills, state media reported yesterday.
The volume of waste produced in the city is growing at eight percent per year and is expected to exceed the capacity of Beijing’s 13 landfill sites within five years, the China Daily reported, citing the city government.
It quoted a municipal commission warning of a “garbage crisis” if the city does not rapidly open new landfills and waste incineration facilities, noting that two of Beijing’s dumps are already full and will soon close.
“We are working on laws and penalties to cut down garbage production in the capital and have sped up construction of new sanitary landfill sites,” the paper quoted a city spokesman as saying.
It gave no other details.
The increasing willingness of city residents to vocally oppose new landfills or waste incinerators poses an increasing difficulty for those tasked with resolving the problem, the China Daily report said.
It said the national government in March canceled construction of a controversial waste-fuel power plant in Beijing because of residents’ worries that it would pollute local aquifers.
The rapid growth of Beijing and other large cities has become an increasing worry for the nation’s planners amid fears over pollution and water supplies.
Last year the central government banned the distribution of free plastic bags at supermarkets throughout the nation.
China is building an ambitious multibillion-dollar water diversion project that will bring water from the nation’s longest river, the Yangtze in central and southern China, to parched northern areas like Beijing.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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