The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, the largest dump site in China, is already full, 25 years earlier than it was designed to last.
The Jiangcungou landfill in China, which has the size of approximately 100 football fields and was designed to accommodate 2,500 tons of garbage per day, is already at full capacity, 25 years ahead of schedule. This was because the landfill actually received 10,000 tons of waste daily, the most any landfill site in the country receives.
Built in 1994 and designed to last until 2044, the Jiangcungou landfill in Xi'an city serves more than 9 million citizens. It has an area of about 700,000 square meters, a depth of 150 meters, and a storage capacity of over 34 million cubic meters.
Until recently, Xi'an was one of the few cities in China that relied solely on landfill disposal for household waste, which is deemed to be the reason why the landfill's capacity was reached early. In early November, the government opened a new incineration plant and at least four additional facilities are expected to be opened by 2020.
These new plants are expected to handle 12,750 tons of trash on a daily basis. These new incineration facilities are part of the Chinese government's plan to reduce the number of landfills, and opt for alternative waste disposal methods such as incineration.
Based on China's statistical yearbook, the country produced 215 million tons of urban household waste in 2017, increasing by 152 million tons from a decade earlier. The currently has 654 landfill sites and 286 incineration plants.
While no data on the country's recycling rate is currently available, a government report indicated that China plans to recycle 35% of waste in major cities by the end of 2020. In July, the city of Shanghai implemented the mandatory sorting and recycling of waste.
In 2015, a landslide occurred on a Shenzhen dump site, which killed 73 people. The landfill had a capacity of 4 million cubic meters with a maximum height of 95 meters but when it collapsed, it was holding 5.8 million cubic meters at a height of up to 160 meters.
