Chaoyang district leads the way in city's trash-recycling efforts

As of now, Chaoyang has set up an array of garbage sorting demonstration zones in its 19 residential communities and townships, involving 1,055 residential communities, 774,000 households and some 2 million people, according to the district government.

The district planned to establish 17 waste transfer stations, nine of which have been completed, and 280 smaller-sized garbage transfer stations serving the surrounding urban communities, more than 100 of which are under construction.

The sorted trash is ultimately transported to the Beijing Chaoyang Circular Economy Industrial Park, where it can be properly disposed of and recycled. The industrial park was established in 2002 and is located in the east of Chaoyang district.

There are two incineration power centers in the park, which have a joint daily processing capacity of 3,400 metric tons of garbage that can be categorized as "other waste", and have strict emission standards for flue gas.

In 2018, the two incineration plants disposed of 1.34 million tons of waste and generated 530 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. There is also a disposal plant especially for treating kitchen waste in the park, which is capable of disposing of 400 tons of waste per day.

Kitchen waste can be separated by the plant into solid waste, liquid waste and crude oil. Solid waste will be delivered to the incineration plants to generate electricity, while the water will be reused after sewage treatment and the crude oil will be deeply processed into biodiesel.

A sanitary landfill in the industrial park has a storage capacity of 8.92 million cubic meters and a designed daily disposal capacity of 1,000 tons.