Beijing yesterday released two plans aimed at increasing the use of recycled materials and boosting the city's solid waste-recovery capacity by 2010.

"Beijing will preliminarily set up a framework for the circular economy and become a model resource-saving city for the nation by 2010," said Yao Fei, an official with the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, at a press meeting yesterday.

The circular economy refers to efforts to make better use of recyclable goods in a bid to reduce the capital's demand for material resources.

Yao said rapid economic growth and urbanization had exerted great pressure on Beijing's natural resources and environment.

For example, the city has per-capita water resources of less than 300 tons, about 13 per cent of the national average. Its per-capita land resources are less than one sixth the national standard.

Fifty-five per cent of the city's rivers are polluted to various degrees, and the amount of inhalable particulate matter in Beijing's air is 42 per cent higher than the national standard.

In 2005, the city reused only 10 per cent of its waste paper; only 4 per cent of retreadable automobile tyres were retreaded; and individual peddlers treated 80 per cent of the capital's electronic garbage.

Beijing discharged 1.279 billion cubic metres of wastewater last year, only 53.9 per cent of which was treated.

According to the Beijing Circular Economy Development Plan (2006-10), the city will spare no efforts to build the city's capacity for sustainable development by saving more energy and recycling more resources.

The plan calls for more farmland to be irrigated using recycled water and requires 95 per cent of the farmland to be equipped with water-saving irrigation devices by 2010.

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