If you are sitting by the window as a train approaches a city, you cannot miss the landfills flying past. Landfills, in most cases, signal the arrival of a major station.

Dumping garbage in landfills and, once they are full, piling it up into hillocks is how Chinese cities dispose of waste. But this process is unsustainable, especially after China has embraced urbanization and consumerism has become the order of the day.

The millenniums-old agricultural country now faces the reality of more than half of its population living in urban areas. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, three of China's largest cities, now generate nearly 60,000 tons of garbage, apart from thousands of tons of construction and industrial waste, every day.