Buried in the nomadic period, humans have been chasing prey and throwing garbage. But with the development of human beings, people began to settle in livable areas. At that time, the way to dispose of garbage was to throw it on the side of the road. As a result, the roadside stinks People couldn't bear it, so the ancient Greeks introduced the earliest garbage disposal bill, requiring cleaners to throw garbage at least one mile (1.6 km) away from the polis, and forbidding people to throw garbage on the street.

Ancient people's treatment of garbage

Since ancient times, the people of China have a tradition of cherishing material resources and being frugal. They also try their best to recycle old and useless materials and give full play to their new value. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the recycling of waste materials has formed an industry in China. Nice Milescu, who came to China as a Russian envoy during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, described the China people he met in his book "China Capriccio": "They can't bear to abandon any waste they despise. They deliberately collect a small piece of leather, various bones, feathers and animal hair, and collect animal droppings, and then skillfully process them into useful items. "

As for the preservation of urban environment, the cities in the south of Ming Dynasty were better than those in the north. "Wanli Wild Collection" records: "Jinling is the widest and cleanest street, and the dirtiest is Bianliang. After the rain, the soil was full of dung and mud splashed on the waist and abdomen. Long sunny days, dusty, unpredictable. If Shi Jing is not as good as Nanjing, it seems to be slightly better than Kaifeng. " In addition to climate reasons, this may be related to the fact that farmers in the south collected manure more actively during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Huang Yuan of the Ming Dynasty mentioned in the book "Whole Agriculture": "It's a pity that the cattle, sheep and wolves of the southern farmers throw ash into the pen every day to step on it, and the rotten grass and firewood are picked up and thrown under their feet ... the pigs and sheep in the north are scattered and the manure is not collected." The north "just doesn't collect dung, so the streets are unclean, the atmosphere is polluted and the well water is salty." Poor recycling of feces will naturally seriously affect the living environment.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, in order to keep Beijing clean and tidy, there was always a law prohibiting littering. Daming Law stipulates: "Forty people get dirty things in the streets through walls, and those who get out of the water ignore them." There is a similar provision in the Great Qing Code: "Anyone who walks through a wall and dumps filth on the roadside will be punished." But in fact, people are still used to dumping garbage and waste directly on the street.

These rubbish accumulate over time, and even lead to the overall rise of the street. "Yanjing Miscellaneous Notes" records that "everything swept by others falls outside the door, and ashes and broken porcelain tiles pile up like mountains. The street is higher than the house, but people go down the stairs, such as falling into a pit valley." This situation caused the road surface to be uneven, and it was unsafe to ride by car and horse, so that Yan in the early Qing Dynasty used "the danger of Chang 'an is more difficult than that of Shu Road" to describe the roads in Beijing. The appearance of this situation proves that if the problem of garbage disposal is not solved well, it is difficult for the urban environment to maintain a good state.