In recent years, Xiamen City has made great progress with marked achievements in terms of harnessing the ecological and natural environment in a comprehensive way. In 1995, Xiamen won the title of "China's Advanced City in Terms of Comprehensive Management of the Environment" and came in the first place in terms of the environmental sanitation in the appraisal organized in 35 big and middle-sized cities; in May of 1996, Xiamen City was granted the title of "One of China's Cleanest Cities". According to Xiamen City Environmental State Bulletin released by the Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection, during the year of 1997, the municipal government put a total of 180 million yuan into the green project, which includes planting more trees in the urban gardens and parks and reinforcing the shelterbelts around the city. As a result, 163.9 hectares of new gardens and green areas emerged in the city, which made the coverage of green areas in the urban area reach 35.4% and the public green area per capita approaches 9.9 square meters. In the year of 1997, Xiamen City generated 2,735,000 tons of garbage, all of which have been properly disposed of. A percentage of 94.88% of domestic garbage was duly treated. And as much as 2,498,000 tons was treated in a harmless way. The air quality of Xiamen City remained good and among the best of the country's separately listed cities. In 1997, the air pollution index (API) in the urban area of Xiamen City was 36. the daily and yearly average values of sulfur dioxide, nitro-oxides and the suspended particles-three of the four key indices used for assessing air quality, maintain within the range of first-rated standards. In July of 1998, the API of Xiamen City was 28. After analyzing the 14 items selected for assessing the quality of the source of drinking water in the quantitative examination with respect to the comprehensive control of urban environments, 97.2% of Xiamen's drinking water comes up to the relevant standard in terms of the quality of source. In 1997, the environmental noise in the urban area averaged 56.5 decibels. In order to get a clearer picture of the average level of noise in the tourist attractions of the city, the Municipal Bureau of Tourism entrusted the municipal environment monitoring station to arrange for a special survey of the noise level in eight selected tourist attractions. The survey found that the average round-the-clock level of noise in the eight attractions averaged 55.48 decibels.