Shanghai tries to reduce its trash, 1 chicken bone at a time

China's biggest city has dived headfirst into a trash sorting program that marks the country's first serious attempt at cutting the amount of garbage headed for landfills.

But despite a sweeping education campaign by the ruling Communist Party and the threat of fines, Shanghai residents still have a ways to go in changing their lifestyles and getting with the program one properly disposed chicken bone at a time.

Months ahead of the campaign's launch in July, the government began its push to explain to Shanghai's young and old how garbage will need to be sorted into four categories: wet, dry, recyclable and hazardous.

From choreographed dances with trash bins to fliers sent to 6.8 million families and a scorecard for participating neighborhoods, efforts to roll out the system en masse have reflected the Communist Party's all-encompassing approach to rules enforcement.

There's lot of garbage to get through. About 9 million tons of household trash to be exact, according to 2017 data from Shanghai's Statistics Bureau. The government hopes the new sorting measures will reduce the amount of waste headed for landfills by making it easier to recycle or compost some of the trash.

"It is going to take a generation to really accomplish it," said Du Huanzheng, a self-described "trash professor."
In a performance held by district-level authorities, eight jean shorts-clad girls danced energetically on a stage beside four large trash bins, to a song which declared "I have no rival in trash sorting!" "The Chinese government has a strong ability to act," Du said of the program's strong enforcement. "Its ability to concentrate on doing big things is stronger than in Western countries."