The Wusong Industrial Zone, which had long been a source of pollution in Shanghai, has been cited as a showcase for recovery and improvement of the ecology and environment. The turnaround was accomplished by revamping and optimizing the city’s industrial structure and production technologies. Meng Zhongwei, deputy director of the office in charge of cleaning up the Wusong Industrial Zone stated, “Our concept was to improve the environment while revamping structure.”

Meng cited, as an example, the Baosteel Group, a Chinese iron and steel giant. Baosteel spent 18.3 billion yuan (about 2.26 billion U.S. dollars) upgrading its equipment and technologies and has built new workshops for producing stainless steel and special steel products. As a result, Baosteel has in turn produced less pollution while seeing improvements in its economic output even though there was a slight drop in overall steel output.

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Six years ago, before the city embarked on an ambitious plan to clean up the 21 square km Wusong Industrial Zone (situated in the northern part of Shanghai), there were 180 industrial ventures that pumped out 28,800 tons of air pollution every year. That’s 30% of Shanghai’s total pollution output. The zone’s greenbelt was a meager 2.8 % and suffered from an inadequate sewer system, discharging untreated waste into the local waterways causing a terrible odor that could be smelled 200 days a year.

Since then, Shanghai embarked on their ambitious plan to clean up the zone. Sixteen major enterprises and 40 production lines were relocated. Over 1,100 households were moved elsewhere and 150 coal-fired boilers were upgraded. The cleanup efforts have cost 2.85 billion yuan (about 351 million USD) thus far, and have included adding 430 hectares of greenbelt, 21% of which is planted with trees. A waste water system has also been installed along with facilities for monitoring air quality.