The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) recently released the 2014 Annual Report on the Prevention and Control of Solid Waste Pollution in Large and Medium Cities (hereinafter referred to as the Annual Report), which is the first time the MEP has released information on the prevention and control of solid waste pollution nationwide.

The Annual Report is compiled mainly based on the 2013 China Environmental Statistics Annual Report and solid waste pollution prevention and control information released by 261 large and medium-sized cities across the country. It is divided into three parts: information release of solid waste in large and medium-sized cities across the country, progress of key work of solid waste pollution prevention and control in the country and capacity building. The present situation of prevention and control of solid waste pollution in China is introduced systematically.

According to statistics, the release of information in large and medium-sized cities produced 238,306,300 tons of general industrial solid waste, 29.370,500 tons of industrial hazardous waste, 547,500 tons of medical waste and 161,488,100 tons of household waste.

General industrial solid waste accounts for 61.79 percent of the total, 29.86 percent for disposal, 8.33 percent for storage and 0.02 percent for dumping, the annual report said. Comprehensive utilization is still the main way to treat general industrial solid waste. Some cities have made effective use and disposal of the solid waste accumulated in history. In general, the provinces with large industrial solid waste output are mainly concentrated in North China, Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia ranking the first three.

The Annual Report classifies waste electrical appliances and electronic products, imported wastes that can be used as raw materials, and bulk industrial solid wastes as "resource wastes", and explains the utilization of bulk industrial solid wastes such as tailings, fly ash, coal gangue, smelting slag, slag, desulfurization gypsum, etc. Among them, in 2013, the tailings produced by the key published industrial enterprises was 1.065 billion tons, accounting for 34.0% of the general solid waste produced by the key published industrial enterprises, the comprehensive utilization was 330 million tons (including the storage of 7.897 million tons in previous years), and the comprehensive utilization rate was 30.7%. The two industries with the largest tailings production are ferrous metal ore mining and non-ferrous metal ore mining and dressing, with the output of 568 million tons and 361 million tons respectively, and the comprehensive utilization rate of 22.6% and 35.4% respectively. The output of fly ash in industrial enterprises was 462 million tons, accounting for 14.8%, the comprehensive utilization rate was 86.2%, and the comprehensive utilization rate was 402 million tons (including 4.442 million tons stored in previous years). The industry with the largest output of fly ash is power and heat production and supply industry. It is followed by nonmetallic mineral products industry, chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing, nonferrous metal smelting and rolling industry, ferrous metal smelting and rolling industry.

Considering that the Annual Report is published for the first time, in addition to the key work in 2013, it also takes into account the regulations and capacity building of environmental management of solid waste in recent years.