A pilot ecological engineering project for municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling in Guanghan City of China is introduced. It aims to reduce, disinfect, regenerate, industrialize and systematize MSW through combining hardware (technological innovation for MSW treatment facilities), software (institutional reform to divert the government responsibility to citizen-enterprise-government sharing responsibility) and mindware (inducing ecologically compatible behavior). The MSW recycling machinery, disinfecting techniques, integrated composting techniques, and organic and inorganic complex fertilizers, and the integrated management of MSW recycling developed in this project have significant ecological and economic benefits. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.