Last month Li's family was awarded masks and napkins, items that can also be used in improving epidemic prevention.

Yu said it is more difficult to promote wise waste handling in rural areas because most villagers have ways of doing things so deeply ingrained that they are hard to change. In addition, the population is widely dispersed, which makes a waste handling program harder to supervise.

The city of Hangzhou started mandatory waste sorting of four categories-recyclables, perishables, hazardous and other wastes-in the urban area in August 2019, and later in villages with the classification reduced to two categories, as is the case in Gaocheng.

Li said he believes that in future villagers will be able to get used to sorting rubbish into four categories.