2 . As Shanghai prepared to introduce mandatory(强制的) garbage sorting on July 1, games and toys that examined fun ways to spread information about the garbage sorting were to encourage younger people to take action.

A 15-second video of a game went on Chinese social media. In the video, players wearing VR headsets saw four different types of trash cans in front of them, and had to throw different types of garbage into the right buckets(桶) to get points. Although it was not the only VR game in the place, visitors lined up around the booth to explore it because of the garbage-sorting theme.

“As a citizen in Shanghai, I am in great need of this game. Maybe I won’t need to check how to categorize(将……分类) each piece of garbage on my phone while going through all my garbage every day if I play this game more often,” said Zhou Zhou, a youngster. But some social media users in Shanghai have complained about the difficulty of sorting different types of garbage.

Wu Xia, founder and CEO of VitrellaCore, the company that created the game, said the idea was to provide an interesting way of learning about garbage sorting. “It’s simple and easy to understand. People can practice sorting garbage without actually going through their trash, and it is a more effective method than using paper materials when training volunteers,” Wu said.

5 . If you live in Shanghai, you might have to take a “lesson” in sorting garbage, as the city recently introduced new garbage-sorting regulations (条例).

It’s now required that people should sort garbage into four categories, namely recyclable, harmful, dry and wet waste. However, if people fail to sort their garbage properly, they can be fined up to 200 yuan. In the past, some previous garbage regulations didn’t give clear fines for people who failed to sort garbage. More cities are introducing similar regulations, following the practice in Shanghai. By the end of 2020, garbage-sorting systems will have been built in 46 major Chinese cities.

According to a study by the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, over 90 percent of the public believe that garbage sorting is important for the protection of the environment. However, garbage sorting is still a big problem in China. Only 30 percent of participants said they think they are adequately sorting their trash, the study noted, it’s partly because many people lack the willingness to sort their own waste.

“It’s a must to have a legal guarantee to promote garbage sorting,” Liu Jianguo said, a professor from Tsinghua University. He also told China Daily that the importance of the new regulations in Shanghai is to change the past voluntary action into compulsory action for everyone.

Aside from China, many other foreign countries have also introduced garbage sorting regulations. In Japan, waste sorting has become a basic survival skill, reported Xinhua. There is a fixed time for disposal (处理) of each kind of garbage and littering can result in high fines and even jail time.

In Germany too, people are asked to sort waste into specific categories, reported HuffPost. For example, in Berlin, people have yellow bins for plastic and metals and blue bins for paper and cardboard.

6 . Garbage sorting (分类) has become a hot topic around China, especially after Shanghai began carrying out a regulation (规章) on July 1.

Beijing has been expected to do the same. At present the regulation gives garbage sorting responsibilities to government departments, property management groups and other organizations. It also gives rules for companies, explaining how they’re responsible for waste collection, transportation and treatment. Citizens are free of responsibilities for the moment.

The long-awaited revision will soon change the situation. “Taking out the trash without sorting it properly will be illegal,” said Sun Xinjun, director of the Beijing Commission of Urban Management. In Shanghai, violators (违背者) are now fined up to 200 yuan for trash-sorting violations. “The maximum fine in Beijing will not be less than that,” he said.

The Beijing city government first promoted garbage sorting in 2009. Authorities have since called on citizens to sort their household waste into four types—recyclable waste, kitchen trash, dangerous waste and others , and leave it in a colored dustbin or trash can. Blue-colored dustbins are for recyclable items, green for kitchen trash, red for dangerous materials and grey for other waste.

To promote the awareness of garbage sorting and expand the base of participants, authorities have employed workers to help citizens. With intelligent devices, those who throw in recyclable waste at given places will be rewarded with bonus points, which can be used to buy daily goods. At some communities, there are no color-coded dustbins. Instead, a scheduled garbage collection service is offered to help improve the environment. In other communities, workers offer a door-to-door service to collect recyclable or kitchen waste.

Beijing Environmental Sanitation Engineering Group has been promoting new garbage sorting facilities such as recycling cabinets and smart kitchen waste trash cans since 2016, Xinhua News Agency reported.

8 . When it comes to becoming eco-conscious (有生态意识的), many people choose to start with something simple: recycling (回收利用). But it’s not as simple as everyone seems to believe.

Indeed, the desire for some people to recycle can lead to ill-informed (不了解情况的) decisions about what can and cannot be recycled, and non-recyclable objects are accidentally put into the recycling bin. The practice is what is known as wishcycling.

Wishcycling boils down to (归结起来是) the idea that just about anything can be recycled, and that if you put it into a recycling bin, those who are responsible (负责的) for it will find a way to recycle it. This is obviously not true, because, despite everything that you’ve been told by the media, not everything is recyclable.

Small non-recyclable objects that are attached to recyclables are generally acceptable. For example, glue and tape attached to paper will be removed in the recycling process without any trouble. But improperly recycling broken eyeglasses, plastic shopping bags, food waste and greasy (沾油渍的) pizza boxes could cause problems to the recycling process.

The objects in the recycling bin are typically sorted by machines at recycling centers, not people. These complex machines are designed to separate plastics, paper, and other recyclables. If something is thrown into the bin that shouldn’t be there, it could end up damaging the machine, which means the recycling center could lose time and money every time people decide to wishcycle. Sometimes, a non-recyclable object is able to sneak (溜) past these sorting machines. If this happens, the non-recyclable object ends up in a load of recyclables that will be sold for the recycling center to make a profit. However, having just one non-recyclable thing mixed in can pollute the entire load of recyclables, which has to be thrown away.

So what you as a consumer need to do is make your own recycling practice most functional (实用的). The best way is to educate yourself. There are certain general rules when it comes to recycling that everyone should know.

10 . “What kind of rubbish are you?” This question might normally cause anger, but in Shanghai it has become a special “greeting” among people over the past week. On July 1, the city introduced strict trash-sorting regulations that are required to follow and expected to be used as a model for our country. Residents must divide their waste into four separate categories and throw it into specific public dustbins. They must do so at regulated times, when monitors are present to ensure correct trash-throwing and to ask the nature of one’s rubbish. Individuals who fail to follow the regulations face the possibility of fines and worse. They could be punished with fines (罚款) of up to 200 yuan (＄29). For those who repeat to go against them, the government can add black marks to their credit records, making it harder for them to get bank loans or even buy train tickets.

Shanghai government is responding to an obvious environmental problem. It generates 9 million tons of garbage a year, more than London’s annual output, which is rising quickly. But like other cities in China, it lacks a recycling system. Instead, it has relied on trash pickers to sift (筛选) through the waste, picking out whatever can be reused. This has limits. As people get wealthier, fewer of them want to do such dirty work. The waste, meanwhile, just keeps piling up.

Many residents appear to support the idea of recycling in general but are annoyed by the details. Rubbish must be divided according to whether it is food, recyclable, dry or harmful, the distinctions among which can be confusing, though there are apps to help work it out. Some have complained about the rules concerning food waste. They must put it straight in the required public bins, forcing them to tear open plastic bags and throw it by hand. What they complain most is the short periods for dropping trash, typically a couple of hours, morning and evening. Along with the monitors at the bins, this means that people go at around the same time and can keep an eye on what is being thrown out. No one wants to look bad.