A garbage picker sorts through trash bags at the recycling center in Changping district yesterday. Photo: Guo Yingguang/GT

Beijing's largest garbage recycling center, in Dongxiaokou township, Changping district, is scheduled for demolition in the coming months, forcing thousands of people who make their living sifting trash to relocate.

The site, in north Beijing, is a transfer station for recycling, a place for sorting and gathering trash. There are more than 800 tenants, each employing a number of garbage pickers.

The people who live and work there deserve more respect, said lawyer and environmentalist Huang Xiaoshan.

Huang became involved with the pickers after one of them informed him of the closure, to raise attention to the plight of the center's workers.

"The majority of the workers are from Henan Province, and some of them have been working in this industry for over 20 years," Huang told the Global Times. Huang has been posting on Sina Weibo about the closure, and took several journalists to the center Tuesday, to draw attention to the issue.  

"Having moved from the south [Fifth Ring Road] to the north of the city, these garbage pickers have contributed a lot to the city's development," Huang said. 

Huang became well-known after he set up a community trash recycling system, dubbed the "Greenhouse," to recycle his community's garbage at source.

"Dongxiaokou recycling centre is an important place for garbage sorting for Beijing, and the government should give the garbage pickers another place to live," Huang said.

The project is part of the reconstruction program in Dongxiaokou township, and it does not include a plan for shifting any of the tenants at the site or provide employment opportunities to those forced to move, the Beijing News reported Wednesday.

An officer from the resource recycling department of Changping commission of commerce said that when making plans for the demolition, the government discussed relocating the site, but decided not to.

 There is no spare land quota that could be used for it, according to a report Wednesday on eeo.com.cn, the website of the Economic Observer.

The government will build a new recycling center to cope with the garbage problems rather than relocate the Dongxiaokou recycling center, the officer told the Beijing News.

"The demolition has already started within the villages in the township, and people started going door-to-door this week, persuading the tenants to move," said Du Kui, manager of a waste recycling company located at the site.

Du has rented a large area at the center for 7 years, which he subdivides and rents to his 150 tenants, who each employs several people. They work recycling and processing metal, paper, plastic and glass, he said.

"Eight years ago, the first batch of trash pickers and recycling companies came here, which was just barren land. They filled and leveled it, preparing the site," said Du.

Du said he heard about the demolition at the beginning of this year, but he does not know where to move his company, as he must relocate to land zoned for construction, not agriculture. They have not been informed of a timetable for the demolition, he said.

At the center, a picker surnamed Zhang, who was sorting plastic bottles outside a rudimentary dwelling, said that he lives there with around 10 people from the same hometown.

Zhang said they will leave when they are told to, but will not consider their future plans, including where to go to, until after the Spring Festival.

Beijing produces 18,400 tons of garbage per day but the daily capacity to process the  city's garbage is 10,400 tons, according to a Beijing Evening News report in May.