Where some see waste, firms smell opportunity

By Li Wenfang in Guangzhou (China Daily) Updated: 2012-12-14 11:02

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.

liwenfang@chinadaily.com.cn

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