Shanghai Speeds up Pollution ControlChina's leading economic and commercial center Shanghai has invested more and more money in pollution control while maintaining rapid economic development in recent years.Statistics show that the city injected 11.16 billion yuan (about 1.34 billion US dollars) last year in the environmental projects. The money was mainly used in tackling old industrial polluting sources, construction of urban infrastructure facilities and environmental improvement in some areas. A total of 33 heavy polluting and 31 major polluting industrial enterprises started to discharge waste within the set standard through improvement last year. The number of such industrial enterprises have accounted for 81.2 percent of the city's total. Up to now, the city has completed 13 environment-friendly projects which reduce the total amount of discharged waste water by 2.45 million tons annually, and greatly cut down the discharge of sulfur dioxide and, smoke and dust. Shanghai also invested huge amount of money to dredge its more than 8,800 urban river courses and waterways last year. The per capita vegetation in urban Shanghai reached 3.5 square meters last year from 2.75 square meters in the previous year. The urban vegetation rate amounted to 20.3 percent. |
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