Is Your Sorted Garbage Being Thrown into the Same Trash Truck?

By Urban Family, July 3, 2019

This article originally appeared on our sister website, Urban Family Shanghai.

By Urban Family

Now that the new regulation has come into effect, we’ve all had to go to great lengths to meticulously sort our garbage. But, after all that effort, is our garbage being thrown together into the same garbage truck? This is what most netizens believed when they saw a video that circulated online earlier this week. However, officials have since refuted the rumor, reports Kankanews.

A video went viral on July 1, the day the latest garbage sorting regulation came into effect. As the video shows, janitors were dumping waste from bins with different colors into the same truck. The place was later identified to be the Xingye Building on Jiangning Lu.

You can watch the scene unfold here (VPN off):

Apart from mixing different types of trash together, another issue from the video is that a green garbage bin is being used, which doesn’t match with the current garbage classification system (black for residual waste, brown for household food waste, blue for recyclable waste and red for hazardous waste.)

Image via The Paper

Thankfully, there’s more to the story. According to the property manager of Xingye Building, the video was actually taken on June 26. “Also, the trash in the green bin was residual waste,” explained the manager. “We ran out of black bins that day so we had to use the old green one instead.” They have now purchased a sufficient amount of black bins so that the misunderstanding won’t happen again.

Image via Kankanews

Shanghai Landscaping & City Appearance Administrative Bureau later advised that old bins can still be used as long as they are correctly marked. Moreover, civilians are welcome to tip off illegal behaviors such as mixing different garbage together by calling 12345.

According to the regulation, organizations such as companies or residential complexes can receive a fine of RMB5,000 to RMB50,000 (USD726-7,265) if they fail to sort their trash properly. A total of 623 venues were hit with rectification notices on the first day of the new regulation.

[Cover image via QQ video]

This article was originally published by our sister magazine Urban Family Shanghai. For more articles like this, visit the Urban Family website, or follow the Urban Family WeChat account (ID: urbanfamilyshanghai).