Zhu Tan, a deputy to the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, said that at present, China badly needs to establish a circulation system so as to make the best use of resources in the production-consumption-waste-reproduction cycle.

Zhu, a professor with the Nankai University, is here attending the Fifth Session of the Ninth NPC, which opened Tuesday morning in the Great Hall of the People.

Statistics show that more than 150 million tons of garbage are produced in Chinese cities annually, and the amount is rising by nine percent a year. But less than 10 percent of the wastes have been re-utilized, and the total amount of garbage waiting for treatment has exceeded seven billion tons across the country.

Zhu said that urban wastes contain many usable substances which include more than 30 percent waste paper, and a large amount of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics, glass and fabrics.

If one million tons of the waste paper are used in paper making, 600 square kilometers of forest can be saved, Zhu said.

The NPC deputy urged that a special law must formulated to promote the recycling of wastes in China, as it has been done in some developed countries such as Germany, Japan and the United States.

Zhu Zhaoliang, a member of the Ninth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top advisory body, has also put forward suggestions on treatment of refuse.

He proposed that China opens waste treatment as an environmental protection industry to the outside so as to absorb more funds into garbage disposal.

(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2002)