The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was a spectacle, but it also generated 107.9 metric tons of waste, the Beijing government said. Thanks to more than 3,000 workers and 300 vehicles involved in the collection and initial processing, more than 80 percent of the waste was recycled.

A total of 1,122 recyclable waste bins were placed in the Olympic Green in Beijing, in addition to 1,422 non-recyclable waste bins. Workers used electric cars to transfer waste from bins to the four "Waste Compressing Points" around the Green. The points were equipped with compressing containers that measure 17 cubic meters and each fit nearly 10,000 bottles.

The next stop was the Xiaowuji Waste Management Station, where China's only NIR automatic sorting line processed the waste. Baled bottles were then delivered to recycling plants.

Manual sorting was used to process waste collected from 11 stadiums located in the Haidian, Fengtai and Shijing Shan districts. It is reported that the audience of the U.S.-China men's basketball game left 26,614 plastic bottles and 223 aluminum cans.

Previous reports suggested that Coca-Cola and Beijing Incom Resources Recovery Co. were going to handle the recycling part of all PET bottles collected from Olympics stadiums.

[Sources: China Environment News, Fazhi Evening, Beijing Evening, Coca-Cola]