The Pacific Beach Coalition, an environmental group based in California, has been cleaning the beaches of San Francisco every month for the past 25 years. With the recent increase in human protective gear waste, the group’s president, Lynn Adams, hopes to raise awareness of this issue. He said, “The waste that we pick up from our beach clean-ups is a lot more than that. We can estimate what ends up in the ocean from the litter we pick up when we clean the beaches, which used to be mostly cigarette butts, but now it’s mostly masks and gloves. As some large mammals may eat the masks and gloves, it can be a hindrance to the marine food chain”.

Another environmental group, Oceans Asia, said that based on the volume of masks produced and a combination of factors, there reached almost 1.6 billion masks in the ocean in 2020, which would take at least 450 years to decompose and would be a huge burden on the ecosystem.

Even if animals do not eat these masks or gloves, they may still have an impact on the ecosystem; Dutch scientists have found that birds nesting in rubber gloves discarded by humans, so Leiden University has launched a project to study the relationship between animals and human protective gear against the disease. And the study found that animals nesting in discarded protective gear, in addition to the nest itself being on an unstable base, also rose the opportunity to contract them the new coronavirus.

In addition to gloves, Leyden University has also found that the ear bands of muzzles can be a nightmare for wildlife of all kinds. If a wild animal accidentally gets tangled in a muzzle, it can be difficult to get rid of it. The Leyden University research team said that many birds have muzzles wrapped around their necks because they can’t get rid of them on their own, and these masks are likely to stay with them for the rest of their lives. Therefore, people are urged to cut off the ear bands before discarding the masks to avoid them posing a potential threat to wildlife.

 

Otherwise, even in times of severe epidemics, there would be some unscrupulous businessmen who wanted to make profit from it. When we took off the masks and threw them away directly, some unscrupulous businessmen would try to collect them and reuse them, but the way they were used was deeply inappropriate, and without disinfection and reprocessing, the masks that could be used to protect against the virus would be ineffective, and may even did harm to the people who use them. So how to correctly treat the rubbish is a serious and important problem.

 

• Several events to cope with rubbish

Nowadays, different countries have various ways to cope with rubbish, such as holding several activities, developing new machine and so on.

The first coming activity I want to introduce is (2021) the 3rd China (Shanghai) International Waste-to-energy & Solid Waste Treatment Technology Exhibition.

1. Introduction to the exhibition.

Cities around the world are facing the problem of growing waste and “rubbish siege”, and in large cities with a large population, the problem of waste has become almost common knowledge.

The annual waste-to-energy event in the Asia-Pacific region, China (Shanghai) International Waste-to-energy & Solid Waste Technology Exhibition, concluded successfully on 11 December 2020 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. The onslaught of the epidemic made 2020 look particularly unusual, after a quiet first half of the year, the waste-to-energy industry rebounded strongly. The exhibition attracted nearly 313 well-known exhibitors, with a display area of about 18,000 square meters, bringing new achievements to the post-epidemic waste-to-energy industry. The exhibition attracted a total of 11,057 professional visitors, many exhibitors pointed that the exhibition was highly professional, with 37 well-known owners of waste-to-energy plants from China Everbright, Zhejiang Jinjiang, Green Power, Chongqing Sanfeng Environment, Hanlan Environment, Shanghai Environment Group, Shanghai Kangheng, Shenzhen Energy, China Tianying, Wangneng Environment, Zhejiang Weiming, Qidi Environment, Shouchuang Environment, Guangzhou Environmental Protection Investment, Shengyuan Environment, etc. visiting the exhibition to purchase.

At present, enterprises upstream and downstream of the industry chain are seeking an interconnected mode of communication and cooperation, attaching great importance to the promotion of their brand image in order to achieve synergistic development. In order to build a comprehensive service platform integrating brand display, promotion, technology exchange, trade cooperation and conference for the whole industry chain, “the 3rd China (Shanghai) International Waste-to-energy & Solid Waste Technology Exhibition” will be held in Shanghai New International Expo Centre on 16-18 November 2021, and “the 9th China (Shanghai) International Waste-to-energy & Solid Waste Technology Exhibition” will be held in the same period, with an expected exhibition area of 22,000 square metres, more than 500 domestic and international exhibitors will be present, and more than 1.8000 visitors and nearly 60 visitor groups will come to visit and exchange ideas. It will provide a “high level, high grade, high quality” exhibition and exchange event, creating a direct and effective trading and exchange platform for China’s waste-to-energy industry.

1. Reasons about attending the exhibition.

The exhibitions are: the professional exhibition for China and Asia, a high quality, international, industry-wide, premium trade show and service platform for the waste-to-energy industry and the wider environmental industry, where contains over 60% of international brands, 25% of which are making their debut in the Chinese market. The exhibition is attracting lots of professional visitors and design institutes and owners from all over the world come to visit and exchange before purchasing.

For professional visitors, they can participate in China’s leading annual industry event; learn about the latest trends and developments in the waste-to-energy industry; find out about new brands making their debut in China, searching for new technologies, new products, new models and new ideas; find new business partners and consolidate existing business relationships; source products from the whole industry chain in a high quality and efficient manner, with one-stop business matching services before, during and after the show; participate in high quality international forums and trainings to gain global cutting-edge management and professional skills and knowledge to improve yourself; gather with 10,000 industry colleagues to make important connections, talk about industry development and share industry events.

 

III.  Scope of display.

1. Pre-incineration technology equipment: waste pre-treatment and sorting technology, permanent magnet/electromagnetic iron remover, waste cranes, special cables for waste cranes, grabs, discharge gates, vehicle scales, load cells, weighing indicators, feed related equipment, etc.
2. Technical equipment: waste incinerators, waste heat boilers and related auxiliary equipment (burners, boiler soot blowers, heat exchangers, fans, etc.) equipment, steam turbines, new technology for steam engines, waste heat utilization technology for waste power plants, generators and related auxiliary equipment, etc.
3. Waste incineration and power generation treatment technology equipment: leachate treatment technology, flue gas purification and ultra-low emission, slag fly ash treatment technology, dioxins, etc.

Waste classification and collection and transportation management: waste classification policy and collection and transportation specification, waste classification technology, intelligent sanitation and sanitation integration, new technology of sanitation equipment, slag conveying in waste incineration power plants, waste treatment compression equipment, waste collection and transfer, landfill new field development, old field upgrading and transformation, etc.

4. Landfill gas power generation technology and utilization: landfill gas collection, purification and power generation, landfill methane and leachate treatment technology equipment.
5. Environmental protection and pollutant prevention and control: dioxin detection and prevention, monitoring of malodorous gases, technical measures for pollution prevention and control, desulphurization, denitrification and dust removal technologies, environmental protection and restoration, (desulphurization, denitrification, wet and dry technology equipment), dust removal, de-whiting and other flue gas treatment related technologies and equipment, activated carbon, catalysts, chelating agents, deodorants, dioxin detection equipment and other related environmental protection consumables, etc.
6. Sludge disposal and domestic waste pyrolysis technology: sludge drying, incineration and composting engineering technology, domestic waste pyrolysis and gasification power generation treatment technology, fluidized bed sludge incineration technology, anaerobic digestion technology and equipment applications of sludge, etc.
7. Kitchen waste treatment: kitchen waste resource utilization technology, kitchen waste sorting and treatment technology, kitchen waste classification treatment and equipment technology, “pretreatment + anaerobic fermentation” disposal technology.
8. The new image of waste incineration power generation enterprises: new technology, new results show, field operation and management, waste incineration power generation design units, research institutes, power plant results show, etc.

The second is Chinese and UN agencies help Nepalese hospitals improve medical waste disposal systems.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced on 6 June that it had launched a new project in Nepal, in partnership with the Chinese government, to help improve the medical waste disposal system at seven hospitals in Nepal that treat newly crowned patients.

According to the UNDP press release, the project would provide autoclaves to the seven hospitals, set up waste disposal areas and train health care workers in related skills.

The project would train 350 Nepalese healthcare workers in medical waste disposal skills and about 100 local government officials would learn how to better respond to health emergencies, the release said. In addition, the project would mobilise young Nepalese volunteers to raise awareness of medical waste management among the population through networking activities. The project was part of the China South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund’s New Champions for Asia and the Pacific project, which would benefit more than one million Nepalese, because the hospital could not handle the medical waste related to New Crown well due to the lack of necessary manpower and equipment, and hoped the project could improve the situation.

All in all, rubbish is one of hardest things for countries to deal with, lots of countries have started to establish their own ways or have cooperated with other countries to figure out the better way, also, we have to raise our awareness of protecting the environment.

By Sherry Song Dhu