In China, Recycling by Tricycle
by Alex Pasternack, Beijing, China on 12.15.07
Back home in the U.S., recycling relies heavily on a system of government initiatives, eco-awareness and slight shifts to our behavior so that we toss our trash into the right bin. But in China, recycling has become second nature without so much as blue bins or elementary school lessons on the 3Rs. Walk down the street in urban China clutching an empty water bottle (necessary of course due to water quality and bad plumbing) and in no time an old lady will show up seemingly out of nowhere, hands and eyes hungrily intent on taking your plastic. She's not a treehugger: she just wants to survive.
The World Bank reports that China's army of scrap collectors numbered 2.5 million in 2005. In Beijing, an industrious scrap collector can earn around US $150 per month, about half of what a Beijing cab driver earns. To see what I'm talking about, check out the first installment of the brilliant video podcast series China's Green Beat. In it, my friend John Romankiewicz and his partner Zhao Xiangyu dive into Beijing's recycling pile to give us a peek at how scrap collectors on tricycles and migrant sorters in back alleys make their living running urban China's low-tech recycling network.
Whether it goes in the blue bin or not, a lot of stuff in China is simply too valuable to landfill. But much, like the mountains of detritus from the country's vast construction boom, is not recycled, or even disposed of properly. It's estimated that less than 20% of China's waste is trashed according to international standards. Waste disposal and recycling -- including, along China's coast, recycling Western e-waste -- is often a highly toxic affair, resulting in severe soil, air and water pollution.
With a national "circular economy" policy behind them, Chinese cities like Beijing are attempting to improve their recycling infrastructure. This year Beijing built the world's largest plastics recycling plant and continued to install recycling bins around the city. The city is hoping to drastically raise its recycling rates, driving up paper recovery, for instance, from 10 percent to 80 percent by 2010.
By continuing to modernize waste treatment, help NGOs raise citizen awareness of the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), build more incentives for the industry to improve, reduce and recycle materials (think of Bill McDonough's idea), and better enforce standards for waste disposal, Chinese cities like Beijing have a shot at dealing with their growing trash pile -- and making much more money than Beijing's freelance recyclers make now.
As Li Qiaofeng, executive director of China National Resources Development Holdings, a mainland company that is setting up a national network of recycling zones to manage electronic recycling, told trade magazine Electronics Supply and Manufacturing,
In Japan, recycling is a $360 billion industry. In the U.S., it's a $100 billion industry. In China, recycling revenues are only $5.4 billion a year. China National Resources aims to grow the recycling industry into a trillion-dollar business.
Already, China is a dominant player in recycling the world's paper. It is the birthplace of paper, after all, and of Zhang Yin, whose paper recycling company has made her the world's richest woman.
Still, taking out the trash properly isn't just a matter of money of course. As China's urbanites become more prosperous, China's garbage pile-up in 2020 could reach 400 million tons, equivalent to the volume generated by the entire world in 1997. As much as we love what they do, no army of bottle-collecting grandmas and recyclers on tricycles will be able to save China's cities from that.
See Treehugger on Cradle to Cradle, China's circular economy policy (and here), and the country's dire e-waste
For more statistics on how China deals with its rapidly growing garbage pile, see the 2005 World Bank Waste Report here. And see global stats on waste at this UN stats page.
via China's Green Beat. Also check out the video podcasts on solar water heating and biomass energy in China.
The comment about old ladies running after you for your bottles couldn't be more true.
When I went to study abroad in Beijing, my class visited many beautiful historic sites. And as we tried to get back on the bus, there were women following us with bags and we quickly found out that they only wanted our plastic bottles.
~I guess China is really serious about the green movement... *chuckles*
Recycling in America needs to be more convenient and more beneficial to the people. I saw plastic bottle machines at supermarkets in CANADA that gave you store credit for recycling.
Excellent entry.
the work that the Green brothers is fantastic and does a great job to highlight a lot of the behind the scenes.
Once while traveling through Sichuan I was talking to some other travelers who were horrified that everyone would throw their bottles out the window of buses. It wasn't until they saw that by the third bounce, the bottles had been scooped up and put into a large sack that they understood that China had an amazing recycling mechanism in place.
no doubt, there are plenty of problems in China (as well as in other places), but where I find hope is that the Chinese have an amazing entrepreneurial spirit that has kicked in to address some of these issues...
R
www.china-crossroads.com
I live in Connecticut where the state has a beverage bottle deposit law. Water bottles are not included, I believe only because when the law was initiated bottled water was not so hugely popular. Every year the legislature tries to include water bottles with much mashing of teeth and of course, lobbying. It seems to be a good way for the politicians to raise election money. Street bottle collecting also seems to be a good way for people to raise money, including old ladies especially in the cities. No chuckles on these folks.
While it is good to hear good news stories, these are just a drop in the ocean of China's massive waste problem.
During my travels in rural China last year, I was continually horrified at the piles and piles of rubbish that would amass at the edges of rural villages. It seems that this is the most common way of disposing of rubbish in most rural places. Everything from plastic bags, food scraps, disposable goods, boxes, polystyrene… you name it. As in India, these piles are worked over by goat, dogs and other animals looking for food, until the pile gets a little too bog or too smelly, and somebody sets it on fire.
Although not without its problems, a slightly less wasteful way of dealing with it might be to burn the waste to make electricity or use the heat for some other purpose. A more efficient way of doing it would probably be to separate the recyclables from the combustibles, compost the compostables (and use the methane gas), and incinerate the rest in useful way. It could provide a source of micro-distributed generation.
… I wonder what the best way would be to get the programme funded. … perhaps there could be some carbon credits in it.
I think this viedo did a great job to show what is going on in Chinese recycling. I learned a lot how they deal with all the trashes they took from trash can and streets.
I have a question to you, I live in Shanghai and I truely believe that even though those tricycle people sort out some of recyclables from trashes, recycling system in China is not efficient at all. So I made a group called "Friends of Recycling Caring for the Earth (FORCE!)". We try to initiate paper recycling in compounds in Shanghai. However, we always encounter a dilemma that we are taking jobs away from Chinese people by doing paper recycling. . If we start paper recycling and people start to sort out papers by themselves, Chinese (esp, economically unfavorable Chinese) who used to earn money for sorting paper will lose their jobs. What do you think we should do to protect Chinese's jobs and start paper recycling at the same time?
We will be very appreciated with your commnets and adivces.
Thanks!
this is a great website because you may need it for school...like me for instance! I think China is doing good and can do better!