Leftover food stuck in bags and containers can attract animals to singular locations where disease can spread more easily and quickly. Some of these diseases can also make people sick. In addition, littering ruins the beauty of the surrounding landscape and architecture. Trash removal and its placement in a central location where it can be sorted for recycling or sent to a landfill are imperative to keeping the city functioning properly, and for keeping its urban wildlife and people safe.
For the most part, this need is being met. I re-use a plastic or paper bag I've acquired while shopping as the trash bags for my trashcan. When the trashcan is full at my apartment, I take the trashbag downstairs and toss it into a large blue bin attached to the back of a bicycle. In the morning, a worker will close up the blue bin and peddle it to a location in the city where the bin is dumped. That trash then gets sorted into recyclables and non-recyclables. The non-recyclables are next taken to the outskirts of the city and burned or placed into a landfill.
Currently, there are no recycling laws in Beijing. This means that I don't have to sort my trash into recyclables and non-recyclables. I just toss it in the blue bin and forget about it. However, this will likely soon change. Over this past summer, the city of Shanghai implemented a trash sorting program that required residents to sort their trash. If they didn't, they would be fined. However, personal trash sorting was controversial because it took away many jobs from people who make a living sorting trash.
