Closed: The Chinese city Britain uses as a dustbin

A heavily-polluted Chinese city where The Mail on Sunday found mountains of rubbish from British homes being recycled by human scavengers has been closed down in an effort to stop an environmental catastrophe.

Our investigation revealed that thousands of tons of waste - much of it discarded plastic - were being shipped out to Lian Jiao in southern China, and recycled in appalling conditions.

We found peasant workers and children as young as three picking through stinking piles of rubbish by hand.

Plastic food wrappers were jet-hosed with chemicals, sending streams of toxic liquid into a stinking black tributary of China's Pearl River and out into the South China Sea.

The scavenger army earned just £1.70 each to process shipments of up to ten tons of rubbish a day thrown out by British householders, unaware of the Dickensian conditions of the recycling workshops where it ended up.

Many of the city's 30,000 workers complained of fevers, coughs, skin diseases or cancer after working in the foul conditions.

Our revelations sparked an outcry and were followed up by several other newspapers, including The Independent, and many in China.

After being alerted to the report, 1,200 police and security officials marched into Lian Jiao on Thursday, blocking off roads and shutting off power and water supplies to force the hundreds of unlicensed recycling firms there to stop operations.

On Saturday, the city remained sealed off with banners ordering businesses to move out by today or face punishment. A truck with loudhailers toured the area barking out orders for companies to leave.

Beijing officials ordered the shut down after being embarrassed by the publicity over the crude working conditions.

Speaking on a local Chinese TV news station, Lian Jiao's Communist Party secretary Wu Shao Qu said: "After a British media report on this issue, we have now stopped all trucks entering the area.

"There were on average 300 trucks a day. The reputation of Lian Jiao as a centre for rubbish will now be history."

Fang Yong Kang, mayor of Nanhai City which has jurisdiction over Lian Jiao, told a local newspaper: "We will try our best to build up Lian Jiao into a five-star area."

One local resident, 25-year-old Lee Hai Chan, said: "No one here will be sorry to see the back of the recycling firms and the mountains of rubbish from overseas.

"We want a clean environment and we want fresh air to breathe."