Rural sewage revolution: How Zhejiang is leading China's push to clean its waterways

With the target of treating more than 50 percent of its rural sewage by the year 2025, China is well on the way to cleaning up its waterways. But in rural areas, it remains a challenge to work out how to handle waste water while protecting the local ecology. 

However, in one village in eastern Zhejiang province, where waste used to be poured into nearby rivers or ponds, a new sewage treatment project has been launched to help solve the problem. Head of the local sewage management company Chen Wanling explains how the newly installed contraption is already helping people in the village of Shangen. 

"One is the tube for the septic tank, over there are the tubes for bath water and kitchen water," he tells CGTN, pointing to the site of the terminal. "The tubes are then connected to a pipeline underground, collecting the village's sewage and transferring it to a terminal."

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The system is part of a project called Watermark initiated in 2009 by U.S. company Xylem and the China Women's Development Foundation. It is just one example of many popping up across China and has the capacity to handle over 150 tons of sewage per day, providing a clean environment for over 1000 villagers.

"We found that their village sewage treatment system is relatively outdated, and we decided to make this village a pilot in Zhejiang," explains Benny Xheng, a senior development engineer, from Xylem China. The terminal in Shangen was completed in May 2023 and local villagers are already reaping the rewards. 

"This is the sewage collected from the village, and it's visibly dirty," says Wu Bin, a village local. "That's the water after treatment… You can see it's quite clean."

In the early stages of the process, the water still has a slightly unpleasant smell, but having sealed off the sewage, even when you're standing on the terminal, there's little clue to what's lying underneath. And after several more steps, the sewage is clean enough to safely release it into nature. In fact, one of the company's representatives claimed that some of the water being discharged in Shangen is cleaner than in urban areas. 

This is all part of China realizing its target of providing safe and clean drinking water for all its 600 million rural people, with Zhejiang province playing a key role in offering new solutions to sewage management. The Watermark project alone has so far provided sewage processing equipment to five villages, but will expand to more rural communities, as China moves to treat at least 60 percent of its rural sewage by the end of 2027 and 90 percent by 2045.

"This project has brought a big change to the living environment of our village," says Wang Xuemi, another Shangen local. "In the past, especially in summer, there would be a lot of mosquitoes and the odor of water," he adds: "But now the air is very fresh." As is the water flowing into the village's waterways.

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