China’s first garbage sorting school was officially established in Taizhou, eastern China’s Zhejiang province on July 1, the day when Shanghai made garbage sorting mandatory.

The establishment of the school has triggered heated debate online. Some believe that it is necessary to study garbage sorting, while the others assumed that the school was just newsjacking.

Qiu Yong, an official from Taizhou government responsible for garbage sorting, explained that the school was in fact a platform to train the public on the classification of waste.

The school does not offer academic education and aims to further promote the garbage sorting development of Taizhou, Qiu noted.

He told Beijing Youth Daily that the curriculum of the school drew inspiration from short-term training courses in Germany, rather than college curriculum. The content of the lessons vary according to the different groups of students, he said.

The school has made relevant industrial codes and compiled China’s first industrial standard on the stiffening of construction mud, Qiu said.

In addition, the school also offers training to third-parties and has received training orders from over a dozen companies since its establishment.

According to Qiu, the school is currently working on the promotion of its courses and hopes to achieve better dissemination through cloud platforms.