On June 1, local residents reported to the Suzhou police that eight ships from Shanghai were carrying waste that they intended to dump on the banks of Taihu Lake. Suzhou police detained the vessels and later found that more than 12,000 tons of garbage that had been shipped from Shanghai had already been dumped at the site.

As Shanghai's disposal of waste in local areas has reached saturation point in recent years, some lawbreakers have taken advantage of the loopholes in supervision to illegally dump Shanghai's waste in neighboring areas, such as in Jiangsu province. This has created a gray industry chain.

Shanghai's waste management authority launched an investigation into the ships trying to dump waste on the banks of Taihu Lake and arrived at the conclusion that the vessels weren't registered with the local authority.

At a news conference on July 22, the Shanghai garbage management authority announced it would stop shipping waste outside Shanghai, and the Suzhou authority declared it would not allow any waste from outside to enter Suzhou .

Shanghai's illegal waste disposal scandal exposes the serious problem of garbage disposal in big cities. Local authorities should pay greater attention to supervising the disposal of garbage and find a proper solution to this issue.