Hohhot, in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, has put great efforts into the promotion of producing electricity from garbage in recent years.

“Every day, nearly 2,000 metric tons of garbage is generated in the urban area of Hohhot,” said Liu Weiming, a worker at the urban management office in Hohhot.

According to Liu, 75 percent of the city's daily garbage is now being used as fuel to generate electricity.  

Two waste-to-energy plants have been established in the city to incinerate solid waste to produce electricity.

Disposing waste in landfills was the conventional way of waste treatment for a long time, according to Shi Zhigang, a director for housing and urban-rural development department in Inner Mongolia, adding that this form of waste management had a huge environmental impact and could cause serious long-term problems.

In 2011, Hohhot produced 500 or 600 tons of garbage every day. More worrying, the figure has grown rapidly in recent years.

To deal with the increasing garbage, Jingcheng waste treatment company in Hohhot led the way to find new methods of waste management by establishing the first waste-to-energy plant in the city. In 2014, Jingcheng's waste-to-energy plant officially went into operation.

According to the plant, it can treat 500 tons of garbage every day and it plans to increase its daily capacity to 1,000 tons.