Garbage piles up on Qinghai-Tibet highway
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 25, 2013
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40 volunteers clear nearly 160,000 pieces of litter from a 450-kilometer section of the Qinghai-Tibet highway between October 12 and 18. [China.org.cn] |
A huge amount of garbage has piled up on the Qinghai-Tibet highway on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in west China, severely threatening the local ecology, an environment activist said in Beijing on Thursday.
Yang Xin, the president of Sichuan-based environmental group Green River, said that 40 volunteers cleared nearly 160,000 pieces of litter from a 450-kilometer section of the route touted as "The Road to Heaven" between October 12 and 18, as part of a garbage pollution survey initiated by the China Environmental Protection Foundation and Green River.
"We collected 63,602 plastic drink bottles, which was 40 percent of all the garbage collected," Yang said, "There were also 43,546 aluminium cans, 27 percent; 25,588 plastic bages and wrappings, 16 percent; 7,416 glass bottles, 5 percent; 13,913 pieces of paper, 9 percent; and 5,122 pieces of metal, 3 percent. The total amount is 159,187 pieces."
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A huge amount of garbage has piled up on the Qinghai-Tibet highway. [China.org.cn] |
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the source for many major rivers in China as well as an essential ecological barrier in the west of China, will be hard to rehabilitate once its fragile ecosystem is damaged by pollution. Due to busy traffic and increases in tourism in recent years, man-made garbage has started to increase and has threatened the local ecology and wild animals, he said.
"Besides metal garbage, food, drink bottles and wrappers contributed 97 percent of all the collected garbage, which mainly come from truck drivers and tourist who casually throw these thing away," Yang added.
The 40 volunteers, from universities and companies in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan and Changsha, were divided into five groups to collect garbage along five sections of a selected route. Moved by the actions of the volunteers, government workers and local soldiers from Tanggula Town also participated in the garbage collection.
This is the first garbage survey and the first large scale garbage collecting activity to take place on the Qinghai-Tibet highway.
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