BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - China's capital plans to revamp the collection of restaurant waste and eventually phase out vendors who ply Beijing's eateries buying scraps used for pig swill, a local newspaper reported.

The city's many thousands of restaurants sustain an army of poor migrant workers who use barrels placed on often filthy three-wheel cycles to buy uneaten food, cooking oil and kitchen scraps.

They take the smelly loads to the city's outskirts, where the refuse is sold for pig feed and -- despite food safety rules -- the oil is recycled for cooking, soaps and other goods.

With the 2008 Olympic Games looming and the country's food hygiene under tough scrutiny, city officials have said they will begin phasing out the vast informal trade and replace it with "unified collection" by specialised contractors, the Beijing Morning Post reported on Thursday.

"This means that the privately owned swill carts will in the future bid farewell to Beijing," the paper said.

The phase-out will begin at Olympic Games venues, a well-known chain of Peking duck restaurants and over 100 hotels that have signed deals to receive Olympic Games guests, the paper said.

By 2010, all the city's 30,000 restaurants and hotel eateries will come under the clean-up plan, which calls for standardised handling of kitchen garbage at waste treatment plants.

Beijing's restaurants produce 1,200 tonnes of food refuse every day, the paper said. It did not say what will happen to the migrant workers who now make a living from the scraps trade.

REUTERS