Photo: Screenshot of online video/The Beijing News

The Zhongguancun subdistrict office in Haidian district of Beijing issued a statement on Wednesday in response to a video showing an employee from a company mashing up cabbage to be put into the kitchen garbage. The subdistrict office has required the company to rectify the situation and take strict action against the individuals responsible for the incident.

The video, which went viral online on Tuesday, showed a sanitation worker mashing up fresh cabbage for kitchen garbage, at a garbage sorting station in Haidian district. Based on the footage, there were residents questioning why the fresh cabbage was being used as kitchen garbage.

Beijing Lüxin Urban Environmental Management Co is responsible for the daily management and maintenance at the garbage sorting station in the video, according to the subdistrict office.

The main responsibility of the company is to ensure that the area around the station is clean and to urge residents to properly dispose of kitchen waste. However, the company hadn't completed the relevant kitchen waste sorting work for the month, so it used fresh cabbage from its own canteen as kitchen waste, said the office. According to the company's website, it was established in 2014.

The subdistrict office immediately talked to the company and required it to carry out self-inspection and rectification. The office said that it will deeply reflect on the mistakes and carry out inspection in all communities in the subdistrict. It will also strengthen guidance on garbage classification, aiming to prevent such incidents from happening again.

China plans to implement garbage sorting in more than 90 percent of residential communities in cities at or above the prefecture level by the end of 2023, and then raise the coverage ratio to 100 percent by the end of 2025, according to the country's housing and urban-rural development authorities.

By the end of 2022, garbage sorting was being carried out in 297 Chinese cities at an average coverage rate of 82.5 percent in residential communities. Daily waste disposal capacity has reached 530,000 tons, with 77.6 percent of it achieved through incineration, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Global Times