Chinese Recycling
The peoples’ sorting system
One morning, my AirBNB host, Kester, and I were enjoying a walk through Shenzhen Bay Park. Today was a holiday, and China was boasting its population. Folks braved the heat and humidity to enjoy this park by the sea and the silhouette of Hong Kong on the foggy horizon.
We’re walking down the brick road along the bank, dodging tandem bicycles and practicing Chinese. I’m getting the occasional stare for being foreign, and for dressing a little too touristy today.
To our right is the sea. I’m admiring the greenery on the bank and its light spattering of plastic bags and bottles. I diverted my path to pull a particularly convenient plastic bottle out of a bush, and carried it to a nearby side-by-side recycling & garbage bin.
I dropped the bottle in the recycling half, paused, then peered inside. The bottle sat atop a pile of dead leaves, a banana peel, and a food stained paper bowl wrapped in a plastic bag. “Of course,” I muttered.
“What did you do that for?” Kester asked.
“Kester, I found these garbage and recycling bins in every city in China I’ve been to. I’ve looked in tons of them, and I have never seen a properly sorted bin in the three months I’ve been here. I’ve seen swarms of maggots in the recycling bins before! Doesn’t anyone in China care about recycling? Does China even have a recycling program?”
He cocked his head, slightly concerned about my outburst, and for not answering his question.
My Zero Waste Backpacking Challenge forced me to stop land-filling. After reducing, reusing, repairing, and repurposing as much as possible, recycling is left to pick up the slack.
Sorting is the first hurdle every recycling program needs to overcome. Garbage contaminates recyclable materials, making sorting & recycling too hard to be worthwhile. Essentially, mixing garbage with recycling turns everything into garbage.
“Sorry,” I replied, cooling down a little. “It’s just that I won’t put trash in oceans and landfills anymore. But if nobody separates trash recyclables, that means nothing in China is recycled, and I can’t use these bins.”
“Oh.” he replied. “We do sort, and we do recycle. Someone picks through the garbage for bottles and cans.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “…Who?”
Kester shrugged. “Old people, beggars, people who can’t do other work. They get paid 0.1 RMB per plastic bottle they turn in.”
That’s a one and half cents. I quickly recalled a number of instances where I had seen folks collecting plastic bottles in large bags.
Kester continued. “Also, this park has government employees who pick up trash. You should be careful,” he advised. “You don’t want to put someone out of a job.”
This set me off.
“Wow, so much for ‘We Recycle’! The public doesn’t do anything of the sort! You’re telling me, that you think protecting the environment is someone else’s job? A poor person’s responsibility? And you’re telling them to reach into a recycling bin full of maggots for a penny?!”
Kester gave me a look.
“…Sorry again,” I meeped.
“It’s the way things are here,” he explained.
I sighed, deflated, and shook my head. “There’s no ‘here’ and ‘there’ anymore. Our oceans and our environment are in trouble. We’re in this together. This is why I pulled that bottle out of the bush.”
Kester was silent. I knew he wanted to say something reassuring but couldn’t do it in English. I didn’t want reassurance so I changed the subject.
“Where do they take the bottles?” I asked.
He beckoned me to keep walking. “I think to some recycling facilities in Shenzhen. I’ll take you to one sometime.”
We wouldn’t get the chance to go together. I was on my way to a new city too soon. But I’d get the chance to tour a recycling facility when I visited Zhengzhou.
I would later learn that China’s public recycling operation is much more impressive than collecting plastic bottles in the streets. People make a living collecting all sorts of recyclables.
But it still upsets me that the recycling bins are phony. If China’s front-end recycling system is going to continually hinge on poor people picking through garbage, I’d prefer that they don’t taint the goodwill of sorting bins.
I’m not being fair. Sorting is a tough cookie because one bad apple ruins the bunch. Plus, improperly sorted recycling bins are just as common in the USA, and nobody’s going through our garbage to make corrections…
Think of all the value wasted, all the the recyclable materials being needlessly contaminated and thrown away. Sorting recyclables is a fruit that hangs so low it practically touches the ground — just move your hand over the correct receptacle.
Besides protecting the environment from unnecessary harm, better sorting would also improve the economy. Kester told me that most people have too many financial troubles to be troubled with separating recyclables. Ironically, they could be feeding people with the recyclables they throw away every day. We could too.
China’s sorters are an incredible asset. The Chinese can easily solve recycling’s biggest problem by making the sorters’ jobs easier.
The US uses single-stream recycling machines instead of people. The same principles apply, but sorting machines aren’t as good as people, so our recyclables are more sensitive to contamination.
I urge you to become more familiar with what recycles and what doesn’t. Keep them separate, and spread the word. Separating recyclables creates value, raises the standard of living, and saves the environment. No modern technology can do the same thing for free.
