Where some see waste, firms smell opportunity

Road to Renewal

Companies move to help city in garbage-sorting campaign and make money along the way

Guangzhou businesses are moving to take advantage of opportunities arising from a garbage-sorting campaign the local government embarked on in July to deal with the city's increasing amounts of waste.

Guangzhou Joraform Environmental Co, which was launched in March, has installed eight kitchen-waste composters in government canteens and residential developments.

The company is selling a version of the machine with a 100 kilogram capacity for about 300,000 yuan ($47.900) and a version with a 200 kilogram capacity for about 400,000 yuan, said Xie Weiming, a director on the company's board.

Guangzhou has a need for at least 1,000 of the composters, he said.

Having the third-largest economy of any Chinese city and a population of 12.7 million, Guangzhou produces 7,500 tons of kitchen waste a day, an amount making up half of all residential waste in the city, according to the local urban management commission.

Meanwhile, Yujin Group of China, headquartered in Kaifeng, Henan province, set up a subsidiary in Guangzhou in October to treat sludge coming from Guangzhou sewage treatment plants.

The group is scheduled to start building the first phase of the project, which will be capable of treating 2,000 tons of sludge a day, in December. That amount is less than the 2,425 tons of sludge that is produced every day by Guangzhou's seven sewage treatment plants, said Zhang Chunping, general manager of the Guangzhou Yujin Solid Waste Treatment and Comprehensive Utilization Co.

Much of the sludge is now being dumped into landfills, a practice that many think is unsustainable.

"People's awareness of the need for environmental protection has improved significantly in the past two years," Zhang said. "So has the government's policy support.

"The Guangzhou government is doing a lot to treat solid waste and is moving ahead of many other cities in sorting garbage. Mayor Chen Jianhua is willing to be called Mayor Garbage. As an industrially developed city, Guangzhou produces a large amount of industrial sewage."

The company is betting that opportunities will arise from policies included in the country's 2011-15 plan on the energy-saving and environmental protection industries, which the State Council released in June, he said.

The plan pledges to support industries in their land use, fiscal spending, fundraising and use of technology.

Thierry Wong, an adviser to Guangzhou Joraform, sees opportunities arising from the country's pledge to cut emissions and to recycle.

Guangzhou produces 14,000 tons of residential waste every day, but only has the capacity to dispose of 13,800 tons of it, mainly by using landfills, according to official figures.

The government is working harder to sort through garbage to reduce waste and to build garbage treatment plants.

Guangzhou Valuda Group Co, a leading recycling company in Guangdong province, established a residential waste division in 2011.

It has since set up test garbage sorting points in various schools and residential communities. It has also been collecting the discarded soft food packaging, which often contains food residue, paper, plastic and aluminum and is regularly turned down by paper mills.

"We saw that the government has started to solve the mounting garbage problem," said Li Yuanxin, an adviser to the company.

Founded in 1994, Guangzhou Valuda collects and processes waste, including plastic, iron and steel and paper, using a network that includes manufacturers, industrial parks and communities.

It turns out more than 400 types of products and has an annual processing capacity of more than 1 million tons.

Although the global financial crisis has had a large effect on the sources of industrial waste, recycling will still remain an sunrise industry, said Li.

He cited a tight domestic supply of resources and an increase in global competition for those same resources as reasons for being optimistic about the country's ability to conserve.

"In some developed countries, recycling is taken into consideration when a product is designed and manufactured, which makes recycling a good and mainstream thing, instead of something that is to be looked down upon. This will happen in China too."

The first phase of the project is requiring an investment of more than 100 million yuan, and Zhang envisions it producing a sound profit. Helping in it will be government subsidies used to support the treatment of sludge and the sale of ceramsite, a type of ceramic sand, that can be produced from burning the sludge.

Both the domestic and overseas markets demand huge quantities of ceramsite for use as a building material, Zhang said.

Xie of Guangzhou Joraform said he is less bullish than Zhang about the kitchen waste industry's prospects in the near term.

"You are going to have difficulties when you start in a new business," Xie said. "This cake is not going to be easy to bite into."

An important question for his business is: Even though the fertilizer obtained by using heat to ferment kitchen waste can yield revenue, who will pay for these kitchen waste composters?

Most of the existing composters have been bought by government agencies, and a few have gone to property developers. But it has been by no means easy to persuade more to do the same.

Li of Guangzhou Valuda said he believes the unleashing of market forces will be essential to ensuring the success of Guangzhou's residential garbage-sorting campaign, which still has a long way to go.

Contact the writer at liwenfang@chinadaily.com.cn.