By 2020, more than 90% of villages will have their domestic waste effectively treated

By 2020, more than 90% of villages' domestic waste will be effectively treated

With the approval of the State Council, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and ten other departments jointly issued a document on the 13th declaring war on rural waste. This is the first document at China's central government level specifically targeting rural waste, sounding the charge in the tough battle to improve rural living environments following the Fifth Plenary Session.

This guiding opinion on comprehensively advancing rural waste governance was jointly drafted by ten departments: the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Central Agricultural Office, the Central Office for Civilization Development, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Commerce, the National Patriotic Health Campaign Office, and the All-China Women's Federation. The fact that so many departments jointly drafted it highlights the determination of the Party Central Committee and the State Council to solve the problem of “villages besieged by waste.”

Rural waste governance is an important measure for improving rural living environments. At the beginning of this year, “rural waste governance” was written into Central Document No. 1 for the first time; the “13th Five-Year Plan” recommendations adopted by the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee further proposed carrying out “actions to remediate rural living environments” and “adhering to equal emphasis on urban and rural environmental governance, increasing efforts to prevent and control agricultural non-point source pollution, and coordinating rural drinking water safety, water and toilet improvements, waste treatment……”

According to estimates by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, China's rural areas currently have about 650 million permanent residents. If only domestic waste is calculated at 0.5 kg per person per day, about 110 million tons of waste can be generated in a year, but 70 million tons of it receive no treatment at all. Factors such as insufficient local attention, simple and crude treatment methods, and heavy fiscal burdens at the grassroots level have made this problem difficult to solve for a long time.

At present, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has launched a five-year special campaign for rural domestic waste treatment nationwide. According to the opinion from the ten departments, future governance actions will target not only rural domestic waste, but also agricultural production waste, construction waste, and rural industrial waste.

The opinion from the ten departments proposed that by 2020, when a moderately prosperous society is fully built, more than 90% of villages nationwide will have their domestic waste effectively treated; rural livestock and poultry manure will basically achieve resource utilization, the comprehensive utilization rate of crop straw will reach more than 85%, and the recovery rate of agricultural film will reach more than 80%; and the harmless utilization and disposal rate of industrial hazardous waste in rural areas will reach 95%.

Establishing a village cleaning system, promoting waste reduction at the source, comprehensively treating domestic waste, advancing the resource utilization of agricultural production waste, standardizing the disposal of rural industrial solid waste, and clearing away waste accumulated over the years——Wang Xudong, deputy director of the Village and Town Department of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said the six major governance measures deployed in the document constitute an “all-out war” on rural waste.

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