Trash collection project aims cleaner Yangtze River

Automatic trash cleaners are moving the garbage they collect onto a trash storage boat on the Yangtze River in Wanzhou, southwest China's Chongqing on July 29, 2018. [Photo: China Plus/Yang Guang]

Collecting trash from the Yangtze River is a major undertaking in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

The city's Wanzhou District, which covers 80 kilometers of the river, has made the work more efficient with automatic trash collection boats.

After the Three Gorges Dam was completed in 2003, trash from upstream started to pile up on the surface of the Yangtze River in the Wanzhou area.

Tree branches, crop debris, construction waste, plastic and other garbage have not only polluted the river but also disrupted river transportation.

A trash cleaning team was formed in Wanzhou the same year the dam was finished, aiming to restore the river to the clear water it used to have. However, the effort didn't make much difference due to limited manpower.

In 2009, two automatic trash collection boats were brought in and changes have taken place.

"We used to collect the river trash manually. It needed a lot of labor but had low efficiency. Now the machine can collect as many as 40 tons of trash in one hour, given that there is enough of it on the river surface. It was a huge increase in terms of efficiency compared with man power. Many other counties and districts of Chongqing have also equipped such boats. The trash that remains on the river became obviously less than before," says Chen Yu, the deputy head of Wanzhou Environmental Sanitation.

Chen says their team now has four such boats working on the river, which play an even bigger role when flood season comes.

Now, nearly 30,000 tons of trash can be collected annually.

Liu Bo, a marine engineer on an automatic trash cleaner, has been doing this job for five years.

Growing up in Wanzhou, he has incorporated his love for his hometown into his work.

"I hope people can come to Wanzhou in winter when water is stored or May when the plum flowers blossom. That's when Wanzhou is at the most beautiful time with clear sky and greenish river banks. That's also the time I always realize no matter how much I sweat in summer to do trash collection, it's all worth it. The more we do our work, the less the Yangtze River will be polluted," says Liu.

Besides constant Yangtze River cleaning work, Wanzhou is also strengthening its governance on tributary rivers to prevent trash-flow into the Yangtze in the first place.

To achieve this, Chen Yu says Wanzhou has utilized River Chiefs to monitor trash entering into rivers.

"As is adopted nationwide, all the branches of Yangtze of the Wanzhou district also carry out its river chief system. Through the river chief governing method, trash from all the 41 towns and countrysides are all collected before going into Yangtze. Trash there is transmitted to garbage treatment plants for process. In the past trash from villages constant flow into Yangtze and other branch rivers, but now it got controlled with roughly 85 percent of household waste can be treated," says Chen.

The garbage collected from the Yangtze River and its local tributaries is burnt at a waste treatment plant.