A sweeping view of Baotou's grasslands. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The city of Baotou – located in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region – has unswervingly pursued high-quality development that has been guided by ecological and environmental priorities and green development programs since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

As a result, the number of good days in Baotou increased from 187 in 2014 to 303 in 2021. The improvement rate of Baotou ranks first among 168 key cities in the country and the water quality of its centralized urban drinking water sources continues to achieve a 100 percent standard.

Over the past 10 years, the city's copper industry built the world's first eco-friendly set of full bottom blowing continuous copper smelting equipment. Moreover, Baotou took the lead in implementing the ultra-low emissions transformation of the local iron and steel industry and got Baotou Aluminum Group Co to compile the autonomous region's first electrolytic aluminum ultra-low emissions enterprise standards.

In recent years, Baotou has continued to promote the prevention and control of water pollution in the Yellow River Basin, as well as the improvement of the overall water environment. Many enterprises have adopted the utilization of wastewater resources, reducing wastewater discharges by more than 6,000 metric tons every day.

Additionally, Baotou took the lead in carrying out the pilot construction of "no waste cities" in the country and promoted the implementation of 80 solid waste source reduction, resource utilization and safe disposal projects with a total investment of 17.1 billion yuan ($2.39 billion).