The multitudes of tourists who spent their eight-day holiday celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day visiting the country's scenic spots, overwhelmed the ability of sanitation workers to cope with tons of garbage that was left behind.
The piles of rubbish that littered many attractions were both an ugly distraction and a source of complaints about people disrespect for their environs.
Garbage collectors at the sightseeing platform along the Bund in Shanghai collected four times as much trash as usual, a daily average of 5 tons, said Shanghai Xinyi Environment and Sanitation Company.
"It's hard for us to get inside the green space when it's so packed with visitors," a sanitation worker on the Bund told Shanghai Television Station, which showed a young mother encouraging her child to pee in a garbage bin.
Workers at Tiananmen Square in Beijing collected 7.9 tons of garbage on October 1, up 25 percent from the same time last year, reported Xinhua.
Visitors to a 3-kilometer-long beach at a resort in Sanya, Hainan Province, disposed of 50 tons of garbage on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, threatening the sea with serious contamination of the sea water, city authorities said.
"Most of the trash on the Bund is brochures handed out by travel agencies," said Guo Yixiong, director of business department in Shanghai Xinyi company.
"Our garbage trucks were often loaded with these advertisements tossed everywhere by visitors," Guo added.
"Such bad habits cannot be changed in a short period of time, and there's no effective way to control it," said Dai Xingyi, professor of the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan Univeristy.
"Some suggested issuing fines, but people would argue with law enforcement officers all day long even if the penalty is only 1 yuan ($0.16)," said Dai.
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