Workers are pouring wet waste into special equipment for oil-water separation. (Photo: People’s Daily app)

An environmental experience center was launched in Hongmei Street, Xuhui District, Shanghai on Tuesday, in response to Shanghai's first regulation on domestic waste management which will take effect next month.

The 350-square-meter building is the first science center in Shanghai that includes both wet waste management and community environmental education, which shows the whole process of waste management from classification, centralized treatment to resource utilization.

Hongmei Street has 22 residential quarters and about 300,000 residents, as well as 3,000 enterprises and about 280,000 workers in its development zone. The street has implemented a series of waste classification projects since 2016, including hardware improvement of garbage bins, fixed-point and timed disposal system, wet waste separation, volunteers’ on-site demonstration and supervision and other support measures.

Residents gradually developed the habit of sorting waste, making the street one of the 18 waste classification model streets in Shanghai.

To further innovate wet waste recycling, the street also cooperated with an ecological and environmental enterprise. Wet waste and food waste could be transported to the environmental experience center and three other centralized disposal points, and then be put into a special equipment for 15 minutes to extract recycled water, which can be used as grease for biodiesel processing or compost material rich in biological strains.

Hongmei Street has reached the goal that the whole process of wet waste treatment should be done within the community—from disposal and transportation, to final treatment.

The street handles nearly 25 tons of kitchen waste a day, solving the waste leakage problem during the long-distance transportation and transit, reducing the cost and improving the efficiency of resources localization.