An otherwise good article in the NYT yesterday about the environmental effects of solid waste incineration in China may have left readers with a misimpression.
Critics and admirers of incinerators alike call for more recycling and reduced use of packaging as ways to reduce the daily volume of municipal garbage. Even when not recycled, sorted trash is easier for incinerators to burn cleanly, because the temperature in the furnace can be adjusted more precisely to minimize the formation of dioxin.
Yet the Chinese public has shown little enthusiasm for recycling. As Mr. Zhong, the engineer at the Baoan incinerator, put it, “No one really cares.”
I frankly don’t know what these people are talking about. Perhaps Mr. Zhong’s comments were taken out of context. Anyone who has lived in China for any length of time knows that recycling has spawned an entire subculture in China (which I wrote about here).
China may not recycle in the color-coded trash bin way of progressive cities in the US, but that does not mean it is not reusing its trash. Just about any waste product with a residual value in China is retrieved, sorted, and reused or reprocessed. The people involved in this work are not motivated by environmental concerns, but by a desire to make a kuai. Motivations aside, without a doubt China has more of a “recycling” culture than the US.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/China Photo
9 responses so far ↓
1 Dan // Aug 14, 2009 at 10:52 am
I thought that quote was way out of line too. Thanks for inadvertently confirming that I had not lost my rocker….
2 cmcelwee // Aug 14, 2009 at 11:06 am
Thanks Dan, always happy to provide whatever assistance I can, however, I think it’s either “lost my marbles” or “off my rocker,” so I really am not in a position to attest to your lucidity given the current evidence.
3 Adam Minter // Aug 14, 2009 at 11:22 am
Actually, the quote wasn’t that far off the mark.
There’s quite a bit of plastic waste, for example, that simply can’t be recycled profitably. However, sorting it out of, say, the food waste (like what happens in San Fran) makes a big difference - even if it is incinerated. In China, the scrap peddlers know the market, and they’re not going to pull that stuff out; meanwhile, households are never going to be convinced to sort it.
Likewise, and perhaps more important, a significant amount of recyclable waste still makes its way into Chinese landfills. And that’s why, if you ever visit one, you’ll see small armies of peddlers sorting through them for the recyclables. And that’s a direct result of Chinese households showing no passion for sorting their waste.
Now, if the trucks which transport waste to landfills are directed to transport that waste to incinerators, you’ve suddenly got a major dioxin problem - and you’ve just lost a great deal of recyclable material.
Not so simple.
4 cmcelwee // Aug 14, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Thanks Adam! If the article had taken the time to clarify this point, like you have, we all would have been more informed.
The typical Chinese household may not care about “sorting” to prevent pollutant emissions at incineration facilities, but then neither do most Americans. I suspect that even many San Franciscans wouldn’t care too much about getting their garbage in the right bin were it not for the economic disincentives faced by non-sorters.
The article, however, appeared to equate “sorting” and “recycling” in a very occi-centric fashion: “recycling” = sorting at point of initial disposal. As you correctly note, there are “small armies” of people who care about (or at least find employment in) the recycling sector. These people are involved at nearly every point of the disposal process after the initial consumer . Given the opportunity, they will see to it that most of recyclable materials are recycled. To say that no one cares about recycling in China—which is the message the article leaves us with– is plain wrong.
5 Adam Minter // Aug 14, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Charlie - I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one. I think the article leaves the impression that the Chinese public doesn’t, generally, care about recycling. And I think that’s very much the case. More precisely: very few people in China, as a percentage of the population, care about recycling.
The best estimates that I’ve seen - and I’ve seen the best - claim roughly 10 million full-time recyclers in China. But let’s say it’s triple that - 30 million - that’s still a very small percentage of the Chinese population that goes through the trouble of recovering resources from the Chinese waste stream.
Partly, it’s a cultural issue. I’ve told this story in other forums, but I’ll repeat it here: a friend of mine from South China told me that, in her village, parents warn their children that if they don’t do their homework, they’ll end up as scrap peddlers, ie, sorting recyclables. For better or worse, and to generalize, recycling is still considered an activity done by those with low social status in China. Good people don’t play with garbage; poor people do.
Now, compare this attitude with that found in San Fran, or Tokyo, where celebrities and other people with high social standing show off their ability to deposit their Fiji water bottles in the correct container. It’s an act with high social value, and there’s a stigma attached to someone who would, say, dump a McDonald’s wrapper into the aluminum can bin. Not so in China.
6 darnoc // Aug 14, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Interesting debate here wrt conscience vs commerce behavioural drivers for recycling. My largely anecdotal experience on the subject in China leads me to agree that for the most part, the general public doesn’t give a rip about recycling….that being said, recycling of plastics, bottles, cooking oil, etc happens every day in non-trivial quantities. I have countless times tossed plastic bottles into rubbish bins in Beijing with confidence that the item will be recycled…..a similar degree of confidence were I to seek out the ‘plastics’ bin in Seattle. The end result may be the same in these cases… but from the perspectives of social values and behavioural change drivers, it’s probably not ideal to rely on what amounts to garbage picking by the less fortunate to play a key role in the recycling value stream.
An ideal solution here may be the inclusion of an RDF (refuse derived fuel) sorting facility as part of the incineration operational schema for the plants referenced in the NYT article…the RDF sorting plant provides not only employment, but also a better fuel that will incinerate more efficiently….ie, with fewer emissions. I worked on a similar project in Brazil several years ago where the RDF plant with certain minimum employment requirements was a requirement to RFP respondents…this requirement did not deter the for-profit operator who planned 30MW of powergen from the incinerator. Obviously, things are different in China for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the availability of power offtake tariffs. Regardless, incineration in China is going to continue….it will be interesting to watch the practices and the debates around them unfold.
7 cmcelwee // Aug 14, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Adam & Darnoc: I agree with both of you; my criticism of the article’s glib conclusion stemmed from what I viewed as its cultural chauvinism. It seemed premised on the assumption that one can only “care” about recycling if it is part of a “green” ethic. From an environmental perspective, as you point out, it doesn’t matter if one engages in recycling because one has to or because it is the fashionable thing to do. Recycling has the same social utility if engaged in by the lowest social strata or the highest.
The Chinese parents threat of a life of scrap sorting could have walked off the pages of Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend.” The English of the classes reading Dickens didn’t “care” about recycling either, but a significant amount of recycling was performed nonetheless. It is only when economic prosperity makes it unnecessary for people to engage in trash “picking” to make a living that you need to change behaviors and introduce economic incentives to encourage recycling. I can remember a pretty trashed America during the period between the end of the “rag men” and the dawn of recycling chic.
“Recycling,” as the authors of the NYT piece apparently use the term, is a learned behavior, not an inherent one. The Chinese have not been taught it in any serious, sustained fashion yet. To suggest, however, that recycling isn’t accomplished in China, or that there is a component of Chinese culture that makes the Chinese uniquely disinclined to recycle isn’t credible to me.
In any event, the sorting facility sounds like a wonderful interim solution, and I owe each of you a beer (in recycled or “reused” glass bottles) for being such engaging commenters.
8 cmcelwee // Aug 15, 2009 at 9:23 am
Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap is far too modest to point out his own excellent work on this topic so let me direct you to Two Cultures, Recycling Edition. Please go read it.
9 Greg // Aug 16, 2009 at 7:07 pm
A quicker way to incentivize sorting at home would be to work out some sort of fee/rebate program for having recyclables in the garbage or the weight of recyclables in the recycling bin.
But there should be more and better paying job opportunities in that business and many Chinese will just have to suck it up for a paycheck.
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