Shanghai Trash Sorting Rules for Foreigners: 垃圾分类 Made Simple (2026)

The first week I lived here, an ayi at my compound gently took a coffee cup out of my hand, poured the dregs into one bin, dropped the cup into another, and peeled off the plastic lid for a third. I had produced three categories of waste from one drink and gotten all of them wrong. If you have just moved to Shanghai and the four bins downstairs feel like a test you did not study for, this is the plain version I wish someone had given me. What are Shanghai's four trash categories? Shanghai sorts household waste into four categories: wet waste (food scraps), dry waste (residual rubbish), recyclables, and hazardous waste. The system has been mandatory since July 2019 under the city's Domestic Waste Management Regulations, and it applies to every household, office and shop. The Chinese names are the ones you will actually see on the bins, so they are worth learning: 湿垃圾 (wet waste) , usually a brown or teal bin: food and kitchen scraps. 干垃圾 (dry waste) , a black or grey bin: general residual rubbish that fits nowhere else. 可回收物 (recyclables) , a blue bin: paper, plastic, glass, metal, textiles. 有害垃圾 (hazardous waste) , a red bin: batteries, bulbs, medicine, chemicals. Get those four…