China has moved to standardize its solid waste recycling industry, which, considered a burgeoning green sector, has on the contrary stoked environmental concerns due to reckless expansion.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) and other government agencies have launched a joint campaign targeting irregularities in the recovery of waste materials including electronics, tires, plastics, clothes and home appliances.

From August to the year end, the government will crack down on small workshops producing heavy pollution, improve the infrastructure in industrial cluster districts, and guide the sector’s healthy development.

While substandard firms will be shut down, legitimate recycling companies will be encouraged to accelerate business expansion by mergers and acquisitions.

The recycling industry is still lagging behind environmental demand with many firms too small and weak in pollution control, Qiu Qiwen, an MEP official said Thursday. Some areas have even become destinations for illegal and poisonous foreign garbage due to loose supervision.

Qiu expects the campaign to eliminate outdated capacity, improve recycling infrastructure and step up the sector’s transformation.

The combined revenue of the ten major recycled resources, including waste steel and paper, amounted to more than 590 billion yuan (nearly 90 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, up 14.7 percent from a year ago.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A large amount of rural funds earmarked for China’s impoverished regions was found sitting idle as of the end of June, according to the latest quarterly review by the National Audit Office (NAO).

Reconstruction work has begun after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake jolted Bortala Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region last week.

An excavator clears the debris from a 6.6-magnitude earthquake which jolts Jinghe County of Bortala Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region last week, in a bid to make room for the construction work of new houses, on August 12, 2017. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

In the two most severely hit villages in Jinghe County, local residents have moved their tents back to their houses, where debris from the earthquake has been cleared. Workers have begun building new houses in the villages.

A total of 384 damaged houses will be demolished, according to the county government.

“Reconstruction will be completed so that 2,642 households in the quake-hit area can move into new houses before winter comes,” said Chen Xinbo, standing deputy head of the county.

The earthquake on Aug. 9 injured 32 people.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China has adjusted air routes around the world’s largest radio telescope in southwestern province of Guizhou to protect the electromagnetic environment.

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), which was put into use in September 2016 to probe space for the faintest signs of life, is sensitive to any electromagnetic interference.

The aviation authority has set up two restricted flight zones in the area, canceled two routes, and added or adjusted three other routes.

The single-dish telescope, with a diameter of half a kilometer, is located in Dawodang depression, a natural karst basin in Pingtang, once an impoverished area in mountainous Guizhou.

Nearly 10,000 residents within five kilometers of the telescope have been relocated. Visitors should also hand in their digital devices before sightseeing.

Four more bodies were retrieved as of Thursday noon following a landslide at an open-pit coal mine in north China’s Shanxi Province, bringing the total number of fatalities to eight, according to the front-line relief headquarters.

A landslide took place at an open-pit coal mine in north China’s Shanxi Province on Aug. 11. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

The accident occurred at around 3 p.m. at Lyuxin coal mine on Aug. 11 in Heshun County, but the coal mine company denied the casualties until its head turned himself in to police Tuesday, confessing that about 10 people were buried in the accident.

At least one person remains missing, but the exact number of people buried is not yet known.

A total of 13 excavators and 33 emergency vehicles are clearing the stones and draining water from the bottom of the pit, according to the relief headquarters. Rescue workers found the landslide volume was much larger than the previously estimated 200,000 cubic meters.

The county’s coal administration head Zhang Ruiqing has been removed from his post.

Rescue work and further investigation are under way.

Lyuxin coal mine, under the Shanxi Coal Transportation and Sales Group Co., Ltd., has an annual coal capacity of 2 million tonnes.