Of course, we should pay attention to the global warming caused by the destruction of the environment, and we must work hard to protect the earth. But these claims seem a little loud to the general public, so years of efforts to educate people about reducing waste and improving recycling have had little success. For many people, a one-meter rise in sea level and the bursting of landfill sites are in the future and far away, which cannot stop the behavior in the name of "ease and convenience".

We should continue to educate and encourage people to recycle. Perusing the Environment Agency's 2021 statistics report, the low recycling rates are 39% for paper, 19% for food, 13% for glass, 6% for plastics and 4% for textiles. In the tropics, with no land and no agriculture, it's hard to compost kitchen waste and food, but if you recycle a few other household waste items properly, it can be a big deal. So in addition to simplifying the sorting of waste, the tax will be levied to reward the public's efforts in this regard, which may give rise to the "garbage collection" industry as in the early days.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the amount of waste generated by people living in big cities is increasing, with leading countries such as Denmark, Switzerland and the United States producing an average of 750 kilograms of waste per person per year. Singapore is not far behind with 490 kilograms of industrial and commercial waste (about 75 percent). If you look at the recycling rate, on the face of it, it's about 60 percent for us, nearly 70 percent for Denmark, and 80 percent for San Francisco, but those numbers tell a different story.

Garbage disposal is a worldwide problem that can not be solved successfully, but also a challenge to our future existence. Fortunately, we still have the time and resources to explore solutions. Perhaps the next generation will have more time and space to respond to the waste problem through a combination of national rewards and penalties, a garbage tax, and more scientific research on waste disposal.

There is no scale consumption market of renewable materials in our country, the costs of recycling treatment are high, the national awareness of recycling is not mature, and the amount of garbage produced because of the corruption and convenience is high. In this case, the road of recycling and environmental protection is a long obstacle.

That said, current recycling is cumbersome and inefficient. Successful recycling depends on three basic steps: collection, sorting, and cleaning. It is not easy or convenient to properly classify, properly clean, and properly recycle. Moreover, according to German data, although their recycling rate is nearly 70%, less than 20% can be recycled and reused, and the rest is due to "debris pollution" in the process, which eventually has to be incinerated, so the high recycling rate is meaningless.

To change people's plastic consumption habits, a high tax on plastic products could also be introduced. This indirectly encourages consumers to reuse, but also lets people understand that the pursuit of convenience comes at a monetary cost to the environment.

Finally, the authorities should be more actively involved in research and development related to waste incineration and disposal. There are some new technologies being investigated such as Plasma Arc gasification. In addition to reducing the amount of ash left after burning, the process also generates electricity. Perhaps there are other technologies still in the experimental stage that could be improved to solve our national problems.

It seems that in order to effectively implement the concept of waste treatment and recycling, the first thing is to enhance the sense of crisis among the people. Chinese people need to know that if Semaco fills up, they will have to find a new place to build a landfill. In addition to construction costs, it will also reduce the housing, leisure and economic space for Chinese people. More directly, it would impose a "garbage tax" and borrow government debt to fund the future. The garbage tax would be a universal tax affecting the whole population and should be paid directly by the consumer group, because garbage is produced by consumption. This is the "punishment" part of dealing with future waste, believing that in a highly capitalized society, immediate monetary rewards and penalties can effectively change people's habits.

What would happen if 10,000 tons of garbage were piled up on the streets? It is hard to imagine that this happened last month in Paris, the flower capital of the world. Regardless of the politics behind it, the news highlights three major problems faced by modern cities with garbage: the production of garbage, the labor to remove it, and the disposal of garbage