China Watch

The Worldwatch Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, has been collecting environmental news items on China.

In the last month alone, they've featured news stories on how:

- 80 percent of the world’s high-tech trash is exported to Asia, and 90 percent of this flows into China. Research also reveals that about 40 percent of e-waste from Britain is processed overseas, and the major processors are China and India.

- Nearly 312 million rural Chinese residents have no access to safe drinking water, facing problems of shortage as well as severe contamination.

- China's 668 cities generate an estimated 150 million tons of rubbish each year, accounting for roughly one-third of the world total.

- In early December, the Yellow River, China’s second longest, turned red from industrial contamination for the third time in three consecutive months.

- The demand for jet fuel in China’s booming civil aviation sector is projected to reach 15 to 17 million tons by 2010, nearly double the record 9.3 million tons consumed in 2005.