The station, located in the downtown Jing'an District, will be the country's first sunken urban rubbish transfer station.

It will be able to handle more than 400 tons of urban refuse each day, said Wu Hai from the district government.

A 4,900-square-metre garden will be located on the site of the current rubbish station.

The new station will be equipped with modern processing facilities once sunken, according to Wu, who is responsible for the district's urban planning works.

Rubbish sent to the station will be compressed and packaged before being transported by trucks to the suburbs, Wu said.

The project is part of a city government push to rehabilitate the environment along Suzhou Creek.

More than a dozen other rubbish dumps along the river will also be cleaned or moved underground and covered by above ground gardens, Wu revealed.

Shanghai used to transport its urban rubbish along Suzhou Creek with boats to the suburbs to go into landfill or to be incinerated.

It meant rubbish transfer stations were established along the river, which posed serious pollution problems.

The city has been planning to gradually change its operation and transport its urban refuse along highways instead of the creek, according to a previous report by the government on the rehabilitation of Suzhou Creek.

Shanghai, with a population of more than 16 million, produces 14,000 tons of urban rubbish every day, according to statistics from the Shanghai Environmental Studies Institution.

The figure has been increasing by at least 5 per cent each year and is expected to double by 2010, according to an institution report.

(China Daily January 29, 2003)