Dongguan will endeavor to make its planned garbage incinerators safe and environmental-friendly enough, Mr. Zhong Yaoxiang, the director of Dongguan Urban Management Bureau said last Saturday.
Zhong made the remark during a radio talk show on January 22 when answering the audience's questions about the pollution problems of waste incinerators.
"It is urgent for Dongguan to build new garbage incinerators," Zhong said. According to him, the existing landfills in Dongguan have been full as the city has been producing a daily of 10,000 tons of garbage.
"There are only three garbage incinerators in Dongguan which have a handling capacity of 3,000 tons at the moment," Zhong said, "the remaining 7,000 tons are becoming heavy burdens for the city's garbage treatment system."
According to Zhong, Dongguan will build four new garbage incinerators this year to cope with the rising garbage amounts. But he promises those incinerators will be operated under the latest EU standards for garbage incineration emissions.
"The dust generated by the waste incinerators will be strictly in accordance with standards of European Union in 2000, that is to be controlled at 10 mg/m or less," said another official surnamed You from the Bureau.
For the cancer-causing dioxin's emission, Zhong said it will be controlled at 0.1 ng/m or less. "Incinerators with temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius could completely eliminate dioxins, and the existing incinerators burn garbage at the temperature of 800 degrees Celsius or above," Zhong said.
According to Zhong, Dongguan prefers garbage incinerators instead of landfill has its own reasons. "In the past 10 years, Dongguan has been searching proper locations for the landfills, but we failed due to the limited land sources of Dongguan, not to mention the serious pollution problems of landfill."
"However, Dongguan will not pin its future merely on garbage incineration, Dongguan will build three more large-scale landfills this year for the emergency conditions when those incinerators fail", he said
( By Morvin Chow)
