Chongqing's exploration of the construction of a "zero-waste city".
With the continuous deepening of the joint construction of "zero-waste cities" in Chongqing and Sichuan, the types of hazardous waste included in the "white list" of inter-provincial transfer between the two places have increased to 59, and a total of 268,200 tons have been approved for transfer since 2020, covering more than 40 cities.
Incineration or landfill used to be the main treatment method for many solid wastes, which was not only costly, easy to lead to pollution, but also caused some waste of resources. The construction of "zero-waste cities" provides new opportunities for tapping "urban minerals".
Inter-provincial solid waste disposal resources cannot be shared, so they have to be rebuilt; the examination and approval of inter-provincial transfer of hazardous waste is strict, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive; the cost of hazardous waste collection and transfer of small and micro enterprises is high, and the disposal enterprises lack enthusiasm; and some solid wastes are not recycled, resulting in waste of resources...... This was a dilemma for solid waste disposal in Chongqing.
Since 2019, when the central urban area of Chongqing was selected as one of the first batch of pilot cities for the construction of "zero-waste cities" in China, Chongqing has continuously made up for the shortcomings of solid waste disposal through a series of reform measures such as the co-construction of "zero-waste cities" in the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, the "white list" cooperation mechanism for the transfer of hazardous waste across provinces and cities, the promotion of high-end circular economy, and the construction of "zero-waste" units.
The reporter of "Lookout" Newsweek learned from an interview that some solid wastes in Chongqing with high environmental risks and high disposal costs in the past have gradually turned waste into treasure, and the effect of solid waste reduction, recycling, and harmlessness is obvious.
Solid waste disposal resources are shared across regions
At the beginning of 2023, the original domestic waste landfill in Rongchang District, Chongqing will be closed and ecologically restored, and the site will be relocated to build a domestic waste emergency landfill, and how to dispose of the fly ash generated by local domestic waste incineration power generation has become a problem. At the same time, the technical transformation of the waste-to-energy power plant in Luzhou City, Sichuan Province, and how to dispose of domestic waste in Luxian County, Luzhou City, have also become a problem.
According to the "zero-waste city" co-construction mechanism between Sichuan and Chongqing, through the coordination of the governments of the two places, the domestic waste in Luxian County was transferred to Rongchang District for incineration and disposal, and the fly ash generated after waste incineration and power generation in Rongchang District was transported to Luzhou for landfill, which solved the urgent need for domestic waste disposal in the two places.
Waste incineration and fly ash disposal in Rongchang in Chongqing and Luzhou in Sichuan have become typical cases of resource sharing in solid waste treatment facilities in Sichuan and Chongqing. Lv Junqiang, director of the Solid Waste and Chemicals Division of the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment, said that solid waste disposal resources in various places have their own characteristics and strengths, but due to lack of coordination and information asymmetry, it is often difficult to share, resulting in the need for duplicate construction of disposal resources. Combined with the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, Sichuan and Chongqing took the lead in carrying out cross-provincial "zero-waste city" co-construction in the country, and carried out in-depth cooperation in industrial green production, prevention and control of hazardous waste environmental risks, and improvement of smart management.
According to the relevant laws, the procedures for transferring hazardous wastes across provinces and cities are strict, and the approval period is long, often taking one or two months, which brings inconvenience to the transfer and treatment of hazardous wastes to a certain extent.
In order to strictly control environmental risks and provide convenience for enterprises in the process of hazardous waste transfer, Chongqing Municipality actively explores the reform and innovation of administrative examination and approval of hazardous waste, and together with Sichuan Province, it takes the lead in establishing a "white list" mechanism for the transfer of hazardous waste across provinces and cities in the country. In view of the large amount of hazardous waste transferred by Sichuan and Chongqing and the lack of disposal capacity of each other, the two places directly approve it according to the "white list", so as to solve the problem of low efficiency of inter-provincial transfer and disposal of hazardous waste.
In April 2020, Chongqing Municipality and Sichuan Province signed the country's first "White List" Cooperation Mechanism for Inter-provincial and Municipal Transfer of Hazardous Waste, which determined that three types of hazardous waste, including waste lead-acid batteries, waste fluorescent tubes, and waste circuit boards, were transferred across provinces and cities, and a total of 15 business units in the two places were included in the first batch of "white list" pilots.
Chongqing Deneng Renewable Resources Co., Ltd., located in Dazu District, Chongqing, is an enterprise specializing in the recycling of waste lead-acid batteries. Since the implementation of the "white list" mechanism, "in the past, due to the shortage of local raw materials, 'not enough', now the raw materials can be smoothly transported from other places, which has strongly promoted the development of enterprises." The head of the company said.
Lv Junqiang said that the "white list" system has produced multiple effects: the approval time for the inter-provincial transfer of hazardous waste has been shortened to about five working days; some hazardous wastes with small production, high investment in facilities and difficult disposal can share resources and avoid duplicate construction of disposal facilities; it has promoted the upgrading of recycling industry technology and reduced disposal costs, such as the disposal price of oil-based cuttings has dropped by more than 30% after being included in the "white list" of Sichuan-Chongqing inter-provincial transfer.
With the continuous deepening of the joint construction of "zero-waste cities" in Chongqing and Sichuan, the types of hazardous waste included in the "white list" of inter-provincial transfer between the two places have increased to 59, and a total of 268,200 tons have been approved for transfer since 2020, covering more than 40 cities. The "white list" of hazardous waste transfer cooperation has gradually expanded to Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hunan and Henan.
The "vein" industry turns waste into treasure
Incineration or landfill used to be the main treatment method for many solid wastes, which was not only costly, easy to lead to pollution, but also caused some waste of resources. The construction of "zero-waste cities" provides new opportunities for tapping "urban minerals".
On the shore of the Yangtze River, in Gangqiao Industrial Park, Yongchuan District, Chongqing, in the modern workshop of Chongqing Electric Power Renewable Resources Recycling Center, scrapped cables, transformers, steel-core aluminum stranded wires, etc. are finely dismantled, classified and packaged on the professional dismantling line, turning them into scrap copper, scrap aluminum, waste plastics and other renewable resources. Since its completion in August 2022, the center has processed nearly 7,000 tons of various types of power waste and reduced carbon emissions by 109,500 tons.
In the past, these scrapped power facilities and equipment were mainly sold to a third party by grassroots power supply companies through bidding, and there were problems such as difficult traceability of disposal, low value, and secondary pollution caused by non-standard dismantling of some small workshops. Yang Zhigang, the person in charge of the center, said: "Today, the center has not only increased added value and avoided secondary pollution through the research and development of professional equipment and green standards, but also gave birth to a recycling industry chain." For example, the shell of the waste meter is made of polyethylene, which is handed over to an enterprise in the park to be processed into a finale release agent after crushing, and the price per ton is as high as 15,000 ~ 17,000 yuan. Up to now, the center has achieved an output value of 115 million yuan, which is more than 31 million yuan higher than the original disposal method. ”
Chongqing has vigorously implemented industrial green production in the construction of a "zero-waste city", promoted enterprise circular production, industrial recycling combination, and circular transformation of parks, and built green parks, green factories, green mines, and "zero-waste" mining areas, so as to promote the green transformation of the waste-producing industry.
Crushing, screening, high-temperature incineration...... In the workshop of Changjiang Molding Materials (Group) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Changjiang Materials") located in Tongliang District, Chongqing, after several processes, the casting waste sand has become "new sand" that can be used again.
Changjiang Materials is an enterprise mainly engaged in the production of coated sand for foundry. Coated sand is used to make molds, which used to become waste sand after molds were used. According to statistics, casting one ton of castings will produce 1.2 tons of waste sand, and about 350,000 tons of waste sand will be produced in Chongqing's auto parts casting industry alone every year.
"Through years of technology research and development, we have overcome the problem of coated sand recycling, and the secondary use of coated sand has low burning reduction and low gas generation, which can improve the qualification rate of castings by 2~3 percentage points, which can not only reduce the production cost of foundries, but also reduce the impact of silica sand resource development and environmental impact. At present, our waste sand recycling rate has reached more than 95%. Xiong Yin, deputy general manager of the Chongqing area of Yangtze River Materials, said.
The reporter learned that through green tax finance, recycling technology research and development, digital management and other measures, Chongqing has built 12 scientific and technological innovation platforms for bulk solid waste utilization, 81 national green factories and 8 green parks, and focused on building 24 "vein" industrial parks and bulk solid waste recycling demonstration bases such as Gangqiao Park.
"Waste-free unit" benefits enterprises and people
Chongqing has vigorously built "zero-waste units" in the construction of "zero-waste cities", and built a number of regional social production and living units in which man and nature coexist in harmony, including "zero-waste communities", "zero-waste construction sites" and "zero-waste institutions".
According to the data, there are about 12,000 hazardous waste generating units in Chongqing, with a total annual hazardous waste generation of about 1.25 million tons, of which there are more than 10,400 small and micro enterprises and social source units with an annual waste output of less than 10 tons, accounting for 84.76% of the total number of hazardous waste generating units in the city, while the hazardous waste generation is only 14,400 tons, accounting for 1.15% of the city's total hazardous waste.
In the process of hazardous waste storage and disposal, these small and micro enterprises generally face the dilemma of high contract threshold, high transportation costs, high professional requirements, difficult warehouse construction, timely transfer, and difficult personnel management.
In order to open up the "last mile" of hazardous waste collection, transportation and disposal, Chongqing has built centralized storage facilities in areas with a large number of small and micro enterprises and non-industrial sources of hazardous waste generators, and allowed qualified enterprises to engage in the business activities of collecting and storing hazardous waste (except medical waste) of enterprises and institutions.
As of November 2023, there are 31 hazardous waste collection and storage facilities in Chongqing, with a collection capacity of 127,400 tons/year, 5,470 small and micro enterprises with a collection quantity of 16,300 tons, 3,158 social source units, 1,868.43 tons of collection, and 33 enterprises engaged in collection and transportation, effectively solving the problem of hazardous waste collection and transportation of small and micro enterprises and social source units.
The rapid development of urbanization has brought about the rapid growth of construction waste, which affects the urban environment and residents' lives. Walking into the construction site of the First People's Hospital of Chongqing Liangjiang New Area, the reporter did not see the dusty and "dusty" scene of the traditional construction site. The relevant person in charge of Chongqing Xinke Construction Group Co., Ltd., the construction party of the project, said that by adopting all-steel frame prefabricated building technology, welding and splicing of manufactured components, reducing wet operations, etc., there is almost no dust pollution, and the amount of construction waste has been reduced by 60%~70%.
Ling Hukeqing, deputy director of the Construction and Management Center of Liangjiang New Area, introduced that as a national-level development and opening up new area, the construction volume of Liangjiang New Area is large. In order to deepen the construction of a "zero-waste city" in the construction field, Liangjiang New Area strives to build a circular industrial chain of construction waste resource utilization of "source reduction, process control, and end utilization", and continues to promote the development of the prefabricated building industry. At present, 78% of the transferred land clearly requires the implementation of prefabricated buildings, and the prefabricated construction area of the newly started housing construction projects in 2023 accounts for 47.3%, and 3 prefabricated building production and R&D bases will be introduced and cultivated.
Domestic waste reduction is a key area for the construction of "zero-waste cities". In the Liangjiang New Area Domestic Waste Sorting Park, leisure seats made of waste plastics and metal, children's amusement facilities, idle items exchange area, and garbage sorting points are exchanged for supermarkets...... It has attracted many citizens to come and play.
After the waste paper, cans and other high-value garbage in the domestic garbage are sorted, how to maximize the utilization of the remaining low-value garbage? This park is also equipped with a large-scale domestic waste resource utilization center. The relevant person in charge of the design and operation of the park, Xin'anjie Environmental Sanitation Co., Ltd., said that in view of the difficulty in the use of large domestic garbage such as old furniture and old mattresses, the company invested nearly 6 million yuan to build the center, through crushing and splitting facilities, metal and wood can be recycled, and other garbage is incinerated again, "The daily processing capacity of the center is 20 tons, and it is currently in a state of saturation treatment, and has achieved low-profit operation." ”
Fan Weidong, deputy director of the Liangjiang New Area Urban Management Bureau, said that Liangjiang New Area has achieved full coverage of domestic waste classification in 8 streets, 52 communities and 414 property communities, with a garbage classification awareness rate of 100%, a resident participation rate of 98%, and a recycling rate of 42%, and the domestic waste classification work case was selected as a "National Domestic Waste Classification Demonstration Case".
Statistics show that Chongqing has built more than 1,500 "zero-waste units" in 24 categories such as institutions, schools, hospitals, and parks.
The relevant person in charge of the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment said that Chongqing will continue to deepen the pilot of "zero-waste cities" in the whole region, build 5,000 "zero-waste units", release the "zero-waste" index, and carry out the evaluation of the construction effect of "zero-waste cities", so that the construction of "zero-waste cities" can benefit enterprises and people, and better build an important ecological barrier in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
