Turning kitchen scraps to washing liquid
Print Edition
SONGJIANG residents can swap 1,500 grams of kitchen waste for a 250-gram fermented product used for washing hands and dishes.
The “trash-to-treasure campaign” is aimed at encouraging residents to sort, recycle and reuse kitchen scraps.
Currently, 14 ferment stations have been set up in Songjiang, with 100 planned by the end of this year.
The stations add water and sugar to fruit and vegetable scraps and let the mixture ferment.
“It’s very functional,” Songjiang native Lu Jinmu from the Xiaokunshan community told Shanghai Daily. “It can be used for washing dishes. I’ve never expected garbage could be turned into something so useful.”
Since March, Lu has swapped waste for the washing product three times.
Popular campaign
“When residents send their garbage to the station, we chop it up, put it in a big vat and add sugar and water at a certain ratio,” said Shen Wanhua from the Xiaokunshan community station. “After three months of fermentation, we will get the essence.”
Shortly after the campaign was launched in March, it quickly became popular among locals. Within half a month, the community station collected 18 vats of kitchen scraps.
“We had to prolong our opening hours because residents were lined up outside,” Shen said.
The fermentation system was devised by Zhou Yingjie, who has been working on the idea for many years.
“As a Songjiang native, I wanted to contribute to making the district a better place to live,” he said. “This campaign helps residents develop good recycling habits while, at the same time, providing a usable household product to replace the chemical detergents.”
Zhou’s fermentation technique actually dates back to the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), when records show that fermented fruits and vegetables were found to possess cleaning properties.
New use of the old tech
Zhou developed a more modern variation of the old technique and invested one million yuan (US$144,883) in the project, supported by the district’s Bureau of Landscape and Forestry and the municipal Environmental Management Bureau.
The system can be applied at home by mixing brown sugar, fruit and vegetables peels, and water at a ratio of 1:3:10 and letting the mixture ferment for three months.
“My ultimate goal is to make this technique a home practice that every family can do easily,” Zhou said.
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