Garbage recycling rises faster than total volume produced

The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) under the Cabinet reported the statistics yesterday, citing figures compiled by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).

People on the island created a total of 2.588 million metric tons of garbage between January and April this year, averaging 2.2 tons a day with an increase of 0.7 percent from last year, said DGBAS officials.

The recycling rate has continued to rise since the operations of garbage classification and collection were introduced in 2006.

A total of 1.114 million tons of garbage were recycled, representing an increase of 55,000 tons or 5.2 percent in the January-April period.

The recycling rate increased to 43.1 percent, 1.8 percentage points higher than that of the same period in 2008.

The recycling system requires households and companies to classify their garbage into two major categories: garbage for regular disposal and recyclable items.

The recyclable items include furniture, electrical appliances, paper, metals, glass, and kitchen leftovers.

Items like compact discs and used batteries potentially harmful to the environment will also be classified and recycled.

From January through April, collection and cleaning teams of environmental agencies islandwide collected 861,000 tons of recyclable items, accounting for 77.3 percent of stuff in the recycling category. The collected and recycled kitchen leftovers amounted to 234,000 tons, constituting 21 percent.

The figures show that the government's enforcement on garbage classification and recycling has proved successful, but there is still plenty of room for improvement, said the DGBAS officials.

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