Beijing headed for 'garbage crisis'

In another "four to five years" all of Beijing's 13 landfill plants will be full, leading to a "garbage crisis", the city's municipal administration commission warned yesterday.

"We are working on laws and penalties to cut down garbage production in the capital and have sped up construction of new sanitary landfill sites," said Guo Weidong, the publicity division head of the commission.

Beijing currently generates 18,000 tons of trash every day and the designed capacity of all garbage disposal plants is 11,000 tons, Guo said, adding all the plants were already overloaded.