That view was endorsed by a recent report on people's environmental behavior, published by the top environmental watchdog in May. It said that while more than 90 percent of the 13,000 interviewees agreed that waste sorting is critical for the environment, only 30 percent said they were doing "well" or "very well" at practicing what they preached.

Moreover, about 64 percent of respondents said there was no point in sorting their household waste because they felt it would be mixed with other types of garbage during transportation.

Liu dismissed that opinion. He said the number of residents who sort waste remains "extremely low", which makes special transportation arrangements impractical as a result of high costs. He suggested accelerating the progress of national legislation to address low public participation, as has happened in several regions.

"A law is required to ensure that garbage sorting becomes a compulsory responsibility for residents," he said.

To that end, the national legislature plans to accelerate mandatory household garbage sorting. On Tuesday, a draft amendment to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for deliberation.

Governments above county-level will be required to accelerate the construction of garbage-treatment systems, with all materials being sorted prior to dumping, collection, transportation and disposal. Companies and individuals who produce waste will have to pay for the treatment based on charging standards determined by the local governments, according to the amendment.

National plan

Liu called for a national plan to allocate recyclable garbage for processing companies. While many major cities have established basic infrastructures for the disposal of unrecyclable garbage, including those for incineration, landfills and biological treatment facilities for food waste, in some regions the foundations are not yet mature.

China requires an overarching plan for the establishment of dedicated centers for the processing of recyclable waste, some of which has to be transported long distances before it can be dealt with, he said.

However, many local governments are not interested in developing these low-end, labor intensive processing industries. That means the central leadership should introduce an arrangement to ensure that these industries are allocated materials, based on national need, he said, adding that preferential policies should be offered to help businesses in the sector better serve the national campaign on garbage sorting and recycling.

Zhang Lanying, an associate researcher at the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China at Southwest University in Chongqing, said the central government needs to promote garbage sorting in a more detailed manner.

"The details determine the success, but China lacks detailed work in promoting garbage sorting," said Zhang, who has working in the field since 1999.

She said a lot of work remains to mobilize the public. Opinion surveys, which collect data and also encourage people, may be among the approaches the country could adopt, and NGOs should be encouraged to play a larger role in mobilizing people, which is something they are good at doing.

"It's very important to understand people's opinions, without doing that it will be hard to solve the problems," she said.