Shanghai, the first Chinese mainland city to carry out a compulsory garbage classification regulation in July, is using intellectual platforms that can count the amount of garbage residents dump（倒）to promote recycling.

A residential area in Shanghai's Baoshan district is using 10 sets of such smart bins. Through data shown on the screen, staff of the platform will know the amount of garbage collected and when and who dumped them. The smart bin can also help social workers. For example, for elderly people living alone, a social worker will go to their home to check if the elderly people failed to dump garbage.

The "green fortune can!'' issued in 2016 by Shanghai environmental authorities is the base of the big data platform. The card is meant to encourage daily garbage sorting and to build an eco-friendly way of life in the city, according to the city government's website. Residents can swipe （刷）the card after selecting the waste type on a screen above the smart bins, and the bin will open automatically. After the trash is dumped, residents will receive corresponding points which they could exchange for small gifts.

The city government said more than 7.28 million Shanghai families have joined the project, and 6.31 million cards have been distributed.   Residents and experts welcomed the use of high-tech equipment in garbage recycling, saying it is more convenient than expected.

But proper garbage handling and necessary construction should catch up to avoid such a good idea from becoming a formalism project, Luo Yameng, a Beijing-based urban-planning and eco-city expert, told the Global Times on Thursday.

In the future, the community's management company would also issue garbage bags attached with QR codes, which would make it convenient for management departments to track residents who break garbage recycling regulations.

The Global Times reporter found that similar measures have been applied in some areas in Beijing, which is drafting its own garbage recycling regulations.

Promising 42,000 new homes across five residential districts, the eco-town of Tengah will be the 24th new settlement built by Singapore’s government since World War II. It is, however, the first with centralized cooling, automated trash collection and a car-free town center, which conservationists hope offers a road map for slashing carbon emissions in the Southeast Asian city-state.

Although comparatively small, with a population of under 6 million people, Singapore’s per capita emissions are higher than those of the UK, China and neighboring Malaysia, according to the country’s National Climate Change Secretariat. That’s due, in part, to air conditioning, which accounts for more than a third of typical household energy consumption. The Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) has predicted that, by the end of this century, average daily temperatures in the city-state may be at least 34.1 degrees Celsius “almost every day”   during the eight warmest months of the year.

As such, keeping cool will, increasingly, be a necessity for residents. Rather than demonizing air conditioning, Tengah’s planners have instead sought to reimagine it. Cold water, chilled using solar power, will be piped through the district’s homes, meaning residents don’t need to install inefficient outdoor AC condensers. According to the town’s energy provider, SP Group, this will generate carbon dioxide savings equivalent to taking 4,500 cars off the roads each year.

Planners used computer modeling to simulate wind flow and heat gain across the town, helping to reduce the so-called urban heat island effect. Elsewhere, “smart” lights will switch off when public spaces are unoccupied, and trash will be stored centrally, with monitors detecting when garbage needs collecting. All residents will have access to the app allowing them to monitor their energy and water usage. Digital displays in each block will meanwhile inform occupants of their collective environmental impact, which could even encourage competition between residential blocks.

Regardless of whether the use of smart technology can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions or not, engaging residents with their own consumption could encourage behavioral change, according to Perrine Hamel, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment. “Changing behavior is going to be an integral part of achieving climate targets and, of course, urban design is the first way to affect and change behavior,” she said.

China has seen important achievements in improving the environment and green development over the past 70 years, especially in fighting against desertification (沙漠化).

Desertification was a serious problem in the 1990s. It caused deadly sandstorms, and did great harm to the local (当地的) people. As President Xi Jinping has said, clear waters and green mountains are the most valuable things. The government and people have been making every effort to fight against desertification. In the process (过程), Chinese people’s efforts and determination to create “green” areas have played a crucial role, without which nothing may be achieved.

A lot of campaigns (活动) have been carried out by the central government to improve the environment. For example, in 1998, China started the Natural Forest Protection Program. Thanks to the program, forests in China increased greatly from 12 percent in the 1980s to nearly 23 percent last year.

Another example of the campaign is the Elion Resources Group, which has been recognized by the UN for its contribution that has slowed desertification.

In Kubuqi, a desert in the North China, Elion has successfully greened 600,000 hectares (公顷) of land. Surprisingly, it also has helped lift more than 102,000 people out of poverty through the development of solar energy and tourism, as well as planting herbs (草药) for traditional Chinese medicine.

In addition, the group’s technologies have also been used in many other important programs, including Yangtze River Ecological Park and Qilian Mountain National Park.

“We will develop new ways to improve our ability to control the sand with the help of modern technologies, such as drones (无人机), AI, big data and the internet of things,” said Ao Baoping, president of Elion Green Land Technology.