As China's economy grows, so do mounds of garbage

[Liberal_in_LA]

As China's economy grows, so do mounds of garbage

By CHI-CHI ZHANG, Associated Press Writer

Sunday, October 11, 2009

(10-11) 14:51 PDT ZHANGLIDONG, China (AP) --

Visitors can smell this village long before they see it.

More than 100 dump trucks piled high with garbage line the narrow road leading to Zhanglidong, waiting to empty their loads in a landfill as big as 20 football fields.

In less than five years, the Zhengzhou Comprehensive Waste Treatment Landfill has overwhelmed this otherwise pristine village of about 1,000 people. Peaches and cherries rot on trees, infested with insect life drawn by the smell. Fields lie unharvested, contaminated by toxic muck. Every day, another 100 or so tons of garbage arrive from nearby Zhengzhou, a provincial capital of 8 million.

"Life here went from heaven to hell in an instant," says lifelong resident Wang Xiuhua, swatting away clouds of mosquitoes and flies. The 78-year-old woman suddenly coughs uncontrollably and says the landfill gases inflame her bronchitis.

As more Chinese ride the nation's economic boom, a torrent of garbage is one result. Cities are bursting at the seams, and their officials struggle to cope.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/10/11/international/i083307D90.DTL#ixzz0TgsMdX9w

At least 85 percent of China's seven billion tons of trash is in landfills, much of it in unlicensed dumps in the countryside. Most have only thin linings of plastic or fiberglass. Rain drips heavy metals, ammonia, and bacteria into the groundwater and soil, and the decomposing stew sends out methane and carbon dioxide.

[bertman]

1. Great post, Liberal_in_LA. The world wants to be like us. Everyone on the planet wants

material possessions. It's a human thing.

As I, a lifelong consumer and possessor of more stuff than I know what to do with, consider how in the world we will ever be able to get Americans to stop wanting STUFF, I look around me and realize that all of the people in America AND the rest of the world who are not as fortunate in the material-possessions category as I am, want the things they see me with.

So, as we well-stuffed mass consumers of mass quantities of mass consumables go about trying to cut our consumption and limit our carbon footprints IN ORDER TO SAVE THE PLANET, we need only look to the developing world to take up our slack in the race to see who gets the most toys. Which is not a hope-inspiring prospect. But maybe there'll be some saviour who comes along and says "sell all that you own and give your money to the poor and take up a life of poverty and service like mine".

Oh, wait . . .

Anybody have a Plan B?