The scrap trader was immovable, despite Wu Wenxiu's pleas. She would pay one yuan - roughly 10p - for a kilogram of plastic. Around the corner in Shi Yuhai's yard, the offer was no better. Wu shrugged his shoulders and began to heave bags from his tricycle on to the scales. "One kuai [yuan] here, one kuai there - everywhere's the same these days. This industry has broken down," he grumbled. Wu is one of 160,000 collectors in Beijing who make a living from the detritus of urban life - plastic sheeting, office printouts, bottles, radiators and scraps of cardboard. Recycling has become a global industry and China is the largest importer of the world's waste materials, taking in as much as a third of Britain's recyclables for example. Then came the slump, decimating the Chinese recycling industry and leaving Britain, the US and others grappling with growing volumes of recycled waste and nowhere to send it.
The scrap trader was immovable, despite Wu Wenxiu's pleas. She would pay one yuan - roughly 10p - for a kilogram of plastic. Around the corner in Shi Yuhai's yard, the offer was no better. Wu shrugged his shoulders and began to heave bags from his tricycle on to the scales. "One kuai [yuan] here, one kuai there - everywhere's the same these days. This industry has broken down," he grumbled.
Wu is one of 160,000 collectors in Beijing who make a living from the detritus of urban life - plastic sheeting, office printouts, bottles, radiators and scraps of cardboard. Recycling has become a global industry and China is the largest importer of the world's waste materials, taking in as much as a third of Britain's recyclables for example. Then came the slump, decimating the Chinese recycling industry and leaving Britain, the US and others grappling with growing volumes of recycled waste and nowhere to send it.
Yet recycling, under the current system, is less benign than it sounds. Dropping your old electronic gear off with a recycling company or at a municipal collection point does not guarantee that it will be safely disposed of. While some recyclers process the material with an eye toward minimizing pollution and health risks, many more sell it to brokers who ship it to the developing world, where environmental enforcement is weak. For people in countries on the front end of this arrangement, it's a handy out-of-sight, out-of-mind solution.
So I read the Guardian's article in full.
Recycling has become a global industry and China is the largest importer of the world's waste materials, taking in as much as a third of Britain's recyclables for example.
"Taking in" is a weasely phrase. What portion, I wonder, is recycled by Chinese buyers into packing sold domestically and internationally, say, a UK firm like Tesco; What portion is simply dumped in Chinese landfills? This article is a helpful companion in illustrating the marketing (i.e. distribution) of waste sorted and collected in the UK. It is a bit vague. I'll wander over to Closed Loop and the Waste and Resources Action Programme.
One thing is clear. Local manufacture of recycled products ought to be key beneficiaries of infrastructure and investment "recovery" plans. I really wish it weren't so difficult to find transparent, bipartisan consensus on that project. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
