RESTAURANTS and canteens in Shenzhen will face fines if they don’t dispose of kitchen waste and used oil at the assigned treatment stations beginning May 1, the Daily Sunshine reported.
Use of recycled oil taken from gutters in restaurants has been a problem in Shenzhen. To curb illegal reuse of gutter oil, Shenzhen started a 100-day operation April 7.
Restaurants and canteens that hand over their kitchen waste and used oil to individuals or enterprises without licenses to treat the waste will face a fine of 2,000 yuan (US$309).
Approximately 1,800 tons of kitchen garbage and 150 tons of used oil are generated in Shenzhen every day, but less than half of the waste is collected by the city’s assigned and licensed treatment businesses. Most of the waste is generated at restaurants, hotels and State-owned canteens.
Only 20 percent of kitchen garbage and 42 percent of used oil are collected by the assigned stations on a daily basis. The rest of the waste is either delivered as household garbage or handed over to small companies to be used as pig feed, said Yang Lei, the deputy director of the municipal urban management bureau, at a media conference Monday.
The improper disposal of kitchen waste and used oil might lead to them being sold back to the restaurants, a serious health risk.
Shenzhen’s 10 administrative districts have enlisted seven enterprises with special permits to serve as assigned kitchen garbage treatment stations beginning in 2012. The four completed stations can deal with 630 tons of kitchen garbage per day, but less than 20 percent of the garbage is collected and treated each day.
Yang explained that the treatment stations are underused because the stations receive low subsidies from the government and do not actively cooperate in collecting and dealing with the waste.
The current subsidy provided by the government is 90 yuan per ton of garbage. The standard was set based on delivery fees for household garbage in 2012. Collecting waste from restaurants scattered across the city is much more expensive.
Some restaurants want to sell the waste as pig feed and do not want to hand over the waste to the treatment stations.
In a bid to prevent the used oil from being delivered to underground oil processing workshops and resold to restaurants, during the 100-day operation, all restaurants and canteens in Shenzhen will be checked.
Dining places will be required to report the amount of kitchen garbage generated each day to urban management departments and sign contracts with waste treatment stations.
For those who deal with kitchen garbage and used oil without approval from the authority, the vehicles and equipment used to transport or treat the waste will be seized and a fine of 50,000 yuan will be imposed. The fine will increase to 100,000 yuan if the restaurant is caught a second time.
Restaurants and canteens that refuse to cooperate will be fined 2,000 yuan. People in charge of canteens owned by governmental institutions will be accountable for administrative misconduct.
(Zhang Qian)
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