Rural Waste Treatment: The Key Lies in Management and Governance
Whether China is beautiful depends on whether its countryside is beautiful. The countryside is a microcosm of the nation's environmental protection achievements, and the quality of rural waste management determines the depth and substance of building a Beautiful China.
It cannot be denied that some difficulties still exist. Weak hygiene awareness, limited disposal methods, insufficient collection measures, low recycling rates, and open-air garbage dumps everywhere. The old “rough-and-ready” methods of landfill and incineration can no longer keep pace with sustainable development. To this end, various regions have launched special campaigns to address rural waste. Rural waste treatment should emphasize the concept of “management,” namely: environmental awareness, waste sorting, and planned governance.
Hygiene and environmental protection as a concept. Villagers generally have weak hygiene awareness and do not consider whether waste disposal is sanitary or whether it affects the rural environment. Therefore, grassroots service organizations, such as cultural centers, need to hang banners, put up slogans, and create bulletin boards to promote the idea of cherishing hygiene and protecting the environment. This addresses the rural waste problem at its subjective root.
Waste resources must be sorted. First, waste should be categorized by type into recyclable waste, non-recyclable waste, and hazardous waste for disposal, with different types of waste handled systematically. For example, recyclable waste can be collected and processed centrally for reuse, while hazardous waste can be collected and destroyed to prevent pollution.
Effective planning as governance. Rural waste treatment should be effectively planned with responsibilities put into practice. Governance measures should be adopted reasonably and effectively according to township and village-level plans, progressively improving the rural sanitary environment. Responsibilities should be assigned to individuals, preventing rural waste treatment work from remaining merely on paper or in words through a system in which township officials oversee villages, village officials oversee groups, and group leaders mobilize villagers. At the same time, appropriate reward and penalty systems should be linked in, using internal waste treatment performance evaluations with rewards and penalties to motivate villagers' enthusiasm for waste treatment and promote long-term, regularized rural waste treatment work.