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SOURCE: BBC News

DATE: November 15, 2019

SNIP: China’s largest dump is already full – 25 years ahead of schedule.

The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, which is the size of around 100 football fields, was designed to take 2,500 tonnes of rubbish per day.

But instead it received 10,000 tonnes of waste per day – the most of any landfill site in China.

China is one of the world’s biggest polluters, and has been struggling for years with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate.

The Jiangcungou landfill in Xi’an city was built in 1994 and was designed to last until 2044.

The landfill serves over 8 million citizens. It spans an area of almost 700,000 square metres, with a depth of 150 metres and a storage capacity of more than 34 million cubic metres.

Until recently, Xi’an was one of the few cities in China that solely relied on landfill to dispose of household waste – leading to capacity being reached early.

In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country’s statistical yearbook. That’s up from 152 million ten years earlier.

The country had 654 landfill sites and 286 incineration plants.