New curbs on oil recycled from garbage
- Source: Global Times
- [01:16 July 21 2010]
- Comments
By Huang Jingjing
Restaurants are required to keep a record of how they treat discarded kitchen waste under new guidelines by the State Council aimed at curbing the use of gutter oil.
Gutter oil is processed from discarded kitchen garbage and reused by restaurants for meals. Use of the low-priced oil is reportedly rampant in small restaurants, roadside food stands and in-house cafeterias. Some experts warned that the garbage oil might be a health hazard.
"The gutter oil will put the public's health in peril because it may contain heavy metal, waste antibiotics or aflatoxins, highly toxic substances that may cause cancer," Huang Fenghong, deputy director of the Oil Crops Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Global Times.
The guidelines, issued Monday, said special campaigns will regularly be carried out to curb the use of the recycled oil. County and district chiefs must lead the clean-up campaign.
The guidelines say urban areas are major producers of gutter oil, which is collected and processed in the suburbs.
Illegal refineries will be shut down and any catering operator who uses the oil risks losing his business license.
Under the new rules, restaurant kitchen garbage can only be delivered to licensed refineries for processing, and the companies must record the type of waste, quantity and treatment methods.
The guidelines have been warmly received, but questions still remain.
"It shows that the top authority is concerned about the problem. That's a promising signal. But how to make sure that the operators are following the rules? What if they report false informa-tion?" Chen Chunyan, 25, a resident in Beijing, told the Global Times Tuesday.
She said she frequently sees small, smelly tank trucks collecting kitchen waste from restaurants along the street where she lives.
The owner of a small Sichuan cuisine restaurant in Chaoyang district, Beijing, who declined to give her name, said the waste collectors are a big help.
"They come and collect the waste every day so we don't need to send it to trash stations by ourselves," she told the Global Times, adding that restaurant garbage collectors are paid 50 yuan ($7.37) per month.
She said she doesn't know where the garbage ends up.
"I think it's hard to get into the habit of keeping records. We work all day long. It's an additional job. How can we count clearly what and how much we discard?" she said.
Huang said authorities should encourage the recycling of waste. But she added that the recycled products should not be used in food.
"The authority can authorize some big recyclers and encourage them to collect the waste and change them into profitable products like biodiesel," she said. "By giving awards to recyclers and penalizing violators, the government can establish a sound waste recycling system."
