Institutions will be in the garbage sin bin

Shanghai will prioritize public institutions when implementing its first domestic garbage management regulations this July.

Yin Yicui, director of the Standing Committee of Shanghai People's Congress, the city's legislative body, was speaking in Beijing at a media event hosted by Eastday.com before the annual session of the National People's Congress, which opens tomorrow.

Shanghai is the first city in the country to introduce such regulations.

"It's urgent to have our garbage properly sorted, but it also takes a lot of patience," she said. "In some other countries it took an entire generation to succeed. The legislators will follow the implementation of the regulations before they take effect."

They will observe whether the public is well mobilized, said Yin. The legislators will inspect sorting installations to ensure hardware is prepared with things such as signs indicating where to place different types of garbage.

She said public institutions and companies will be inspected first because it is easier for them to sort out garbage than for residential complexes.

It is expected that the government will roll out further planning, requirements, standards, policies and mechanisms to facilitate the implementation of the regulations.

Yin said the government institutions will be supervised according to their responsibilities.

Eleven of the city's districts have said they aim to be exemplary districts in domestic garbage sorting, according to Yin.

"We will especially keep tracking the efforts in two or three different types of districts to study their best practices and promote them later," she said.