CRI听力: Xinhua Daily Telegraph: New Environmental Protection Needed in Chinese Countryside

A commentary from the Xinhua Daily Telegraph raises a timely issue, the environmental protection of China's vast rural areas.

It says the waste generated by rural households previously consisted of mainly organic matter, such as livestock dung.

However, China's rapid urbanization has seen an influx of more non-organic materials to the countryside, threatening its blue skies and green fields.(www.hXen.com)

Increasingly chemical fertilizers have replaced organic ones, while plastic and glass are quite commonly found in rural families' garbage.

The article argues that city's high-cost garbage disposal system can not be totally reproduced in rural areas.

For example, authorities in Changsha county of Hunan Province may have to spend 30 million yuan or more than 4 million US dollars simply to get a standard garbage disposal system running.

But by recruiting a number of volunteers for door-to-door sorted garbage collection, they can bring down the cost by a large margin.

The new method not only reduces costs, which is much needed in underdeveloped regions, but can also recycle organic waste for farming and even electricity production.

The commentary also emphasizes that what Chinese farmers lack is not consciousness on environmental protection, but rather effective and sustainable approaches to it.