As early as the pre-Qin period, there were legal provisions on littering and breaking hands at will. According to "Han Feizi's theory of hiding", "Yin's method, those who abandon ash to Tao, break their hands." Ashes are rubbish. Residents who throw rubbish on the road will face the punishment of breaking their hands if they are found. This law has been spread to the Qin Dynasty, and there is a saying in the Qin Law that "those who abandon their ashes to Taoism will be punished". In the Zhou dynasty in the pre-Qin period, the earliest institution specializing in garbage disposal appeared in history. "Zhou Li Qiu Guan" records that "there are six corporal Wolff, six professionals and sixty disciples". The wolf's duty is to clean up the garbage in the city streets and keep the city clean. This is the earliest institution dedicated to cleaning up garbage.
In the Tang Dynasty, some people specialized in recycling garbage for landfill. In the Song Dynasty, a special organization "Street Department" was set up to manage urban sanitation, and there were specialized professional sanitation workers. For example, in Kaifeng, Hangzhou and other metropolises with a population of one million, hundreds of sanitation workers come to clean the streets and dispose of garbage every morning. According to Meng Lianglu, there were people engaged in excrement removal in Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. They regularly remove the excrement of each family.
Compared with the Song Dynasty, the urban sanitation management in the Ming Dynasty went further and the technical level was stronger. During the Ming Dynasty, Beijing had advanced drainage pipes. By the Ming Dynasty, urban and rural garbage disposal had formed a complete industrial chain. For example, garbage and feces were used for farming, and there were special personnel in the city who were responsible for recycling garbage and feces and then transporting them to the countryside for sale.