Beijing's first kitchen trash disposal plant has commenced operations, marking the beginning of a new campaign to rid the capital of trash, and recycle materials that can be reused.

The first load of 200 tons of kitchen trash, mainly from the city's 122 Olympic partner restaurants and 31 Olympic venues and facilities, was sent to the plant last weekend and treated. The plant services all Olympic partner restaurants and canteens.

"The move marks the startup of the city's efforts to control and manage food-generated trash," Chen Ling, deputy director of the Beijing municipal administration commission told the media at the inauguration of the plant last Saturday.

The plant is located in southern Beijing's Daxing District, with a daily waste treatment capacity of 200 tons, some 73,000 tons per year.

The volume is just one-sixth of the trash Beijing's kitchens generate every day. Another three plants will be built in four years to meet the capital's growing trash disposal demands. Major restaurants, State-owned enterprises, government organs, hospitals and schools will be included in this clean kitchen campaign, leading up to the Olympics next August.

The treatment plant separates solid and liquid waste, recycling all re-usable material for commercial use, such as fertilizers.

Wang Weiping, a scholar of environment-economy studies at Beijing-based Renmin University said China was a leader in this field.

"In kitchen trash treatment, we haven't learned from others," Wang said.

In urban Beijing inside the Fourth Ring Road, there are an estimated 20,000 restaurants.

Currently, a 1,000-member group from Jiangsu Province is responsible for the collection of this kitchen trash.

The trash is often privately sorted and treated by individuals and households using various clandestine methods not considered environmentally friendly.

Home to some 16 million people, Beijing generates 5 million tons of trash every year, not including construction waste. In 2002, employees of the State-owned enterprises and government bodies were encouraged to take the lead and sort trash from recyclables.