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Incinerator Dissent in China: Reuters posted an interesting story the other day about the changing nature of environmental protest in China.

The gist of the piece is that citizens regarded as part of China´s "urban elite" -- essentially metro-based middle-classers (as opposed to less affluent farmers out in the boondocks) -- are becoming more assertive in opposing the government´s plans to build more trash incinerators:

"Previously, most of those who challenged officials were farmers living with huge levels of pollution. The impact on their lives or livelihood was disastrous enough to outweigh the potential risks of taking on the government. The concerns of the middle classes, about the future of their health or assets, brought a different kind of protest.

" ´Many people involved in 2009 cases are rich,´ said Xie Xinyuan, project coordinator at Friends of Nature. ´They are able to hire people to do professional research and present it to the public. Or they are so well-educated that they can do it by themselves. People who live in less developed areas may also be harmed by the garbage crisis, but there is not so much they can do.´ "

Reuters also notes that China´s ongoing economic boom has catapulted it past the United States into the top spot as the world´s largest national producer of household garbage; and that Beijing has so far held firm to its plan to build three new incinerators by 2012, and four more on top of that by 2015.

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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