RSS Feed for the unit Urban and rural waste in China

Introduction

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

China has become the workshop of the world as the Chinese are becoming greater consumers themselves, from their changing diet to owning more household things. The production cycle and the waste inputs and outputs that this can generate is creating an increasing problem of waste in China. This unit explores how it is being dealt with and considers mainly solid wastes. Waste has increased in both the urban and rural areas, with varying levels of formalised waste collection systems in place (Figure 1), normally in the urban areas where city municipalities have taken a lead in waste management.

Figure 1 Keeping the streets clean is big business in China. In Beijing, nearly every back street has a large rubbish receptacle owing to the high number of hutong clearances

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

Learning outcomes

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

explain and apply the importance of the waste hierarchy to waste management
realise that economic development changes the nature and amount of waste generated
consider a case study of unregulated waste dumping and the environmental impacts contrasted with digital waste products (digital dumping)
recognise that informal waste collection systems play important roles in recycling and job creation
compare and contrast waste output levels for a range of different countries
understand how current ‘Western’ lifestyles and aspirations lead to increased consumption
to appreciate how product availability and how product creation also leads to waste and undesired outputs
explain and illustrate the waste hierarchy and its role in both informal and formal waste management systems
use life cycle analysis on a simplified basis to describe impacts for the use of products
recognise that economic valuation does not provide an appropriate measure of all the consequences of human actions
appreciate the environmental implications of consumer behaviour.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

1 Recovery and recycling

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

In the UK and Europe there is a clear distinction between recovery and recycling. Recovery usually refers to wastes that have had some ‘value’ recovered from them, so recovery refers to energy from waste and fuel manufacture, and recycling and composting. Recycling figures usually include composting, although increasingly these figures are reported individually or stated as combined recycling and composting figures. Thus you need to be careful when reading and comparing various figures for waste management for different countries, as some other countries use the terms ‘recycling’ and ‘recovery’ interchangeably. In their Environmental Permitting guidelines, Defra state that ‘the key feature of a recovery operation is that its principal objective is to ensure that the waste serves a useful purpose by replacing other substances which would have had to be used for that purpose (thereby conserving natural resources)’ (Defra, 2008).

Box 1 summarises the waste hierarchy.

Box 1 The waste hierarchy

The waste hierarchy is a management system for waste commonly applied to household wastes. It has a principal objective to protect the health of the public, but often this is forgotten in highly developed economies. Any strategy for waste management has three key objectives which are embodied in the hierarchy. These are minimising waste produced, making best use of waste that is produced and minimising any immediate or future risk of pollution from waste management practices. We could view the hierarchy as five levels:

Reduce waste – don’t create waste in the first place.
Reuse ‘waste’ – use products for a purpose more than one time.
Recycle waste – reprocess waste materials to be used for new products.
Recover waste – incinerate waste and recover energy for heat and power generation.
Dispose of waste – place waste in landfill which is not suitable for recovery, recycling or reuse.

(Adapted from Official Journal of the European Union, 2008)

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

2 Understanding waste in China

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

The composition of waste changes with time as a country grows and develops. This is because consumers earn more wealth, and their buying patterns change, leading to different types of things being purchased and eventually disposed of. Waste from poorer families in Beijing, for example, tends to be mainly organic matter (e.g. food-related scraps, some compostable paper), followed by ash and dirt. There is a very small amount of plastic, paper and glass, and rarely some metals items. This is in distinct contrast to that from a wealthier family, which is mainly paper-based waste, organic, plastic, glass and metals. Waste, as you will see, is also influenced by wastes that are imported and by waste that washes up on our shores, or blows into our regions.

Waste levels throughout the world are different for different countries, but generally range from just under 1 kg up to more than 2.5 kg of waste generated per person per day. China is at the lower end of the scale with a reported value of about 0.7 kg per person per day in 2002.

Waste also tends to grow in amounts over time as a country becomes ‘wealthier’ owing to increasing demands for raw materials and growing consumption by households. An example of 100 years of raw materials growth is shown in Figure 2 for the USA from 1900 to 2000. The major types of products are shown, along with strong economic ‘dips’ that tend to demonstrate reductions in materials flows.

Source: Wagner, 2002

View larger image

Figure 2 USA flow of raw materials by weight for 1900–2000, expressed in millions of metric tonnes.

You might have been somewhat surprised that from about the mid 1940s onward the major component of raw inputs has been crushed stone, sand and gravel. These are, and always have been to some extent, utilised for road-building programmes and other major construction programmes. These commodities in turn create wastes further ‘downstream’, and we would expect that China’s large draw on commodities will also create wastes somewhere in the global system, but mainly in China itself. The USA, for example, generates some 1.9–2.2 kg waste per person per day (Wagner, 2002).

Figure 3 gives three different scenarios for China’s municipal waste based on three predicted waste levels for the urban population of China. Clearly, this prediction only covers the majority of the population. It would be expected that rural households would also generate waste; although these households may generate more overall, these wastes may be more organic in nature, as shown above. The three scenarios considered modelled a starting waste value of 0.9 kg per person per day (similar to Slovakia or Poland), rising to a relatively low waste level (1.2 kg), which is similar to that for Japan, an expected waste (1.5 kg) value like Estonia, Sweden, or France and a high waste (1.8 kg) value like that of Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus or Denmark. Some of the waste generation and disposal processes, as you will shortly read about, are very different from those normally considered in developed countries. The next section will explore these so-called brownfield sites in more detail.

Brownfield landfill sites are landfill sites that are uncontrolled rubbish tips; they have no mechanisms for protecting the environment from the waste tipped into them. They are called ‘brownfield’ as the sites tend to create contaminated soil and water tables when rubbish is continually dumped with no safeguards such as impermeable liners or legislated controls on types and amounts of waste that can be dumped. The liquids leached from the rubbish sites can be very hazardous.

View larger image

Figure 3 The growth of population in China’s urban area along with three different scenarios for the growth of municipal waste in China

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

2.1 The waste waterfall in Lugu Lake

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

Box 2 is a case study of Luoshui village, which was until very recently a pristine example of a mountain village in the Yunnan province. This case study was carried out by a Chinese academic from Beijing Normal University (Tian Song, 2006) and is written from his perspective.

Box 2 A case study: garbage of Lugu Lake, Yunnan province

Lugu Lake (泸沽湖) is a great and beautiful lake at the boundary of Yunnan and Sichuan Province, Southeast of China. More and more tourists have visited there since the 1980s.

In October 2000, I visited Lige (里格), a small village on the shore of Lugu Lake, Yongning County, Yunnan Province, which is the habitation of the famous Mosuo people (摩梭人), or Nari people (纳日人), a branch of the Naxi ethnic group (纳西族). To my surprise, I found a garbage can in the center of the village. I lived in some small villages in northeastern China during my childhood and I never saw such things in traditional area. In my memory, everything in villages comes from dust, and goes back to dust. Residual food could become food for chicken and pigs; garbage from home cleaning was dumped to pig beds and would later be dug out as fertilizer. I was confused by the garbage can in the village. I predicted that there must be a garbage dump outside the village, not too far, not too close. But with only a few hours to stay there, I could not ask questions such as, where do you dump your garbage?

In September 2003, I met Zhao Hua (赵画), an anthropological photographer. She took many pictures of the Nari people on the boundary of Sichuan Province and Yunnan Province. In January 2004, Zhao Hua told me that she would spend spring festival with Nari people close to Lugu Lake. I asked her to find where Lige and Luoshui (落水) dump their garbage. Luoshui is another Nari village close to Lige. It is the earliest village that developed tourism, and therefore is the richest village around Lugu Lake. It had internet bars even before 2000.

One month later, Zhao Hua called me to say that she found, and was astonished by, the garbage dumps of Lige and especially Luoshui (see Figure 4). For the latter, a hill several hundred meters long was covered by six years of garbage including plastic bottles, drinking packages, shoes, glass bottles and batteries. Nobody in the village visited there, nobody in the village knew how severe the garbage problem was. In my opinion, the garbage problem in Lugu Lake is the internal problem of the industrial civilization. There are no industries around Lugu Lake, so there is no industrial garbage there. But they had garbage of the industrial civilization. When they joined the ‘food chain’ of modernisation, the garbage problem was hardly avoidable. The garbage there had two origins: 1, that left by tourists; 2, that produced by themselves after their living standard was raised.

Source: A. Hu’aer, 2004

Figure 4 (a) Waste collection truck in Luoshui village, a practice which started just a few years ago; (b) a closer look at what is in the waste stream in Luoshui; (c) cattle grazing on rotting food and waste from the informal rubbish tip. How often have you seen a plastic bag stuck in a hedgerow, tree, and shrub or along a roadside where you have travelled?; (d) the effect of an informal waste tipping process on the land and its surroundings – at the bottom of the tip, an industrious person scours the hillside for materials which can be reused, while her baby waits nearby sitting on the tip.

When they made money they became richer and richer. They used more and more industrial products in their daily lives, such as washing powder, shampoo, plastic shoes, etc., which are signs of civilization, development, progress, and so on. As a consequence, more and more nondegradable garbage appeared. The villages are the bottom of the downriver side; they can’t find their own downriver for dumping their garbage, and can only dump their garbage in their own mountain. So, this case is a good illustration of my argument.

The pictures by Zhao Hua were seen by a China Central Television crew, and they asked me to help them produce a program. I hesitated at first and then agreed. Zhao Hua guided the production crew. I saw the program only when it was aired. They did not consider my explanation as given above, and still put it into a conventional pattern, that the garbage dumps were there because some officials were not duteous. After the program was broadcast,the mayor of Lijiang government asked the county government to solve the problem. The garbage hill was closed for several days, and then, the garbage disappeared from the hill. Zhao Hua guessed that the garbage was burnt and then covered by earth. Later, interesting things happened. As for Luoshui, garbage was still produced every day, but officers dared not allow dumping in the original hill. They had to find a new place. At first, they wanted to dump the garbage in the mountain of another village, but the village refused to accept it. At last, they had to dig a place the size of a basketball court, on the land of the secretary of the village, as a temporary garbage dump. Four years have passed, I plan to visit there this year and I believe that I will find a new garbage dump in the mountain close to Luoshui.

Readings taken of water visibility over a period of time in Lugu Lake can give us information about liquid garbage. Lugu Lake is very clear. In 2000 when I visited there, the visibility of the lake water could reach 11 meters. In 2004, when Zhao Hua visited there, the number was 9 meters. A journalist friend for Yunnan TV told me that the number was 14 meters in 1984. The lake become dirty dramatically. Since the Han dynasty, Nari people have lived around Lugu Lake. They drank lake water directly. But in 2000, I was told in Luoshui that the water close to shore was not drinkable, and people had to draw a boat to the center of the lake to take drinkable water.

(Tian Song, 2006)

These types of brownfield landfills create serious environmental problems through the contamination of the local soil and water. The sites also give off decomposing gases such as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Some sites also create food for wildlife which may not be the best nutritional inputs. Consider the cattle that eat plastics, for example; if you lived nearby, you might well decide to give up certain foods. But Lugu is only one of many of these stories and sites.

Some experts estimate that there are at least 5000 brownfield landfill sites in China, like the one described above, which do not have properly managed systems in place to cope with chemical spills, leachates and escaping gases. But with waste growing by some eight times between 2005 and 2020 there will need to be another new 1400 landfill sites to cope with the supply of waste, based on current solid waste plans (Hoornweg et al., 2005). Many of the current landfill sites also need urgent attention to bring their working practices up to the national sanitary standard and ensure that waste does not leak out of the site.

But there are also other, more intensive, waste sites such as that in Guiyi, which recycles electronic waste, or e-waste, and which has been labelled by some as the ‘digital dump’ of the world. Much of this digital rubbish (Figure 5) originates not in China but overseas.

Figure 5 A street recycler makes a great find, as electronic equipment fetches the highest prices overall

Box 3 is adapted from the Basel Action Network (2002, which is cited in Hoornweg et al., 2005) and was reported again more recently to be a continuing problem.

Box 3 Digital dumping

Digital dumping: over 100,000 people active in e-waste recycling in Guiyu

Guiyu, in China, is a group of four villages lying along the Lianjiang River in the Greater Guangdong Province. An estimated 100,000 people in Guiyu are involved in the e-waste recycling business, mostly from the agrarian regions having migrated there. Recyclers on average make about $1.50 per day dismantling computer and printers, collecting toner, burning copper wires, and using fires and acid baths on circuit boards. Drinking water has been trucked into the province for several years now because some residents claim that the groundwater is foul tasting. Hundreds of trucks flow in and out of the region each day, full of scraps from printers, computers,monitors, television sets and other e-waste. The waste clearly originates from North America, but there is also scrap from Japan, Europe and South Korea. Computer shells and fragments pile up instreets, along riverbeds and in makeshift recycling villages outside of towns. Fires that melt copper wire are likely to emit hazardous gases due to the brominated flame retardants used in insulatingwires. Acid-treated circuit boards lie along the riverbeds, where the groundwater was tested (in 2000) for lead and was found to be 2400 times higher than the recommended drinking water guidelines prescribed by the WHO. Pollution and waste from the electronic wastes, scrap and residues is rampant and the poor are in the main completely unprotected from the impacts.

(WMIC report, cited in Hoornweg et al., 2005)

Guiyu is not the only environmental hotspot in China due to contamination from waste but it is, like Lugu, economically motivated. Lugu profits from dumping in the environment freely, and Guiyu profits by letting chemicals seep out of very rudimentary processing plants. Waste has polluted water supplies and more people have to rely on bottled water in China. But this is an environmentally unsustainable solution because of the plastic waste that is generated. The supply of bottled water also creates a form of conspicuous consumption – that is, consumption which is ‘beyond’ necessity in many cases. This consumption is also mirrored in the West, where we have ample potable water on tap, yet we still drink more and more bottled water, with tremendous waste consequences. There are different motivations for drinking bottled water, but overall the same poor environmental outcomes seem to result.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

3.1 China’s waste recyclers – a story of waste and bicycling

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

The volume and value of waste in China has generated a new wave of street-level recyclers who, in many cases, have migrated from their agricultural villages in the rural west towards the cities along the east coast. Sections 3.2 and 3.3 are based on first-hand experience by an OU environmental studies student who travelled throughout seven major cities during the months of November and December 2007 (Sinclair, 2008a and b). Fortunately for us, the student is also a photographer, and his story offers a rich visual and written picture about recycling at the street level.

The story explores how waste moves about in China and asks if there are better ways to recycle resources, and if there are any lessons we can learn from street-level recycling. It also explores the amount of waste generated in general terms each day from various households, and how the Chinese people have used the tradition of reuse of materials and the surplus of migrant labour to address the supply of waste.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

3.2 Street recycling systems – how they operate

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

In many Chinese cities street recycling is a way of life, and the way it works is really quite straightforward – it is all about turning waste materials into cash for those willing to collect it. The waste provides a resource and, to some extent, a means for people to earn money to live. The individuals involved are in our Western terms self-employed entrepreneurs. If they work hard (and are lucky) they make more money than if they had not migrated from their villages. Many cities have a steady supply of materials such as paper, corrugated card, plastics and metals. From your experience, you may recognise that these are often collected for recycling (that is, making into new items with a similar function). Foam and electronic goods are also sought after. All these waste items have a cash value based on their weight. The recyclers will spend their entire day travelling around neighbourhoods collecting and buying materials. Once they have collected as much as they can carry, they then take their load to depots where the waste is weighed out and money changes hands. The recyclers buy waste materials at one price from shops and individuals and they sell them for a higher price to the depots. In many cases the people collecting waste are, not surprisingly, rural migrants who have moved towards China’s coastal cities in search of a better life for themselves.

The ‘bottom of the waste stream’ also supplies some materials such as wood, tiles, crockery and some stone which originate from houses which have been torn down or recently abandoned in preparation for redevelopment. Street recyclers exist in many countries around the world and are called many things, including scavengers, waste pickers, informal waste collectors or cleaners (Figure 6). In this unit I use the term recyclers, or street recyclers, as their occupation is focused on getting materials which have a market value that can be sold on to be reused in some format. The majority of their activity takes place at the street level and in many cases the recyclers do not venture much further than their neighbourhood area.

Figure 6 A woman collecting paper and cardboard in an area which is being cleared for housing redevelopment. These projects rely partly on street recycling to ensure that a significant amount of waste is recovered

One of the largest waste streams in terms of waste generation is the general rubble produced during demolition. Some of this rubble, such as ‘hardcore’ (i.e. broken bricks, rocks, etc.) can be used again as a base or infill for new building sites, depending on its quality and content. Wood, as shown in Figure 7, along with other household items, is also generated, along with copious quantities of dust. Demolition reveals iron and steel from concreteen crusted reinforcing bars, and this can be melted down and used again.

Figure 7 Old Shanghai hutong being cleared for new high-rise buildings

There is also the issue of waste statistics and how much waste there actually is versus how much a government may report. Like levels of crime, many governments only know the exact number of car thefts when all thefts are accurately reported – an unreported effect. Also, as governments collect more data about more things, the process in some cases becomes more reliable and robust. There is likely to be quite a lot of waste which is generated but not necessarily collected, or not counted in the collection process (Hoornweg et al., 2005). The key point is that we may never know the exact amount of waste generated from a city, but we can be fairly certain that it seems to be growing, and that the only way to really know the final waste figures is to study the situation in further depth.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

3.3 By foot, two wheels and three wheels

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

There is a social hierarchy within the recycling community, with the lowest tier involving people on foot collecting what they can carry. These are inevitably the very poorest of the recyclers. They will generally be reasonably able-bodied people, although often with some physical disability. People from this group will have either chosen not to beg or will have learned that they can earn more from recycling than from begging. Begging in any case can only be a very last resort in China, as the Chinese tend to give only to beggars who are manifestly not able to work for a living.

As they have only very limited resources, the pedestrian recyclers tend to collect their materials from waste bins rather than buying it from others. Coming from a Western liberal background, where social provision is something that many of us might assume will always be there, the sight of such poor people collecting packaging and also discarded food from bins can be very upsetting. However, either this group is relatively small or it is less visible, as most of the recyclers you see are poor rather than destitute. The next tier above are those people who carry their materials on bicycles, and the next level up from them use tricycle rickshaws (see Figure 8). Of the on-street recyclers I observed, the tricyclers are clearly the most prosperous. They can carry more and benefit from economies of scale in terms of the number of trips to depots. Often you will see two people working together on one tricycle and this team work may help them to support each other throughout the day.

The tricycles can carry much more waste and these recyclers can then achieve more trips per day in theory, and potentially earn more money. In China’s bustling streets it is easy to overlook the recyclers at work. The ubiquitous tricycle is used for an extraordinary range of activities; it can be a taxi, a delivery vehicle, a mobile eatery, a shop or a workshop. However, if you have ever been to China’s cities, or are ever there, you will soon realise how common an activity recycling is in many districts. Many of the tricycle fronts have impromptu signs attached to them offering recycling services to the general public. These signs typically say that they are especially looking for electronic equipment, wires and metals, as these items command the highest values in the depots in terms of making a profit. The two men in Figure 8 were in fact working together as a team in order to combine their recycled loads and then split their earning equally. His sign translates as ‘I buy (I recycle) air conditioners, refrigerators, TVs, etc.’ as these items command more money from the recycling depots. Sometimes recyclers work in pairs or small groups if there are especially bulky or heavy loads that need to be moved. A typical day of work for street recyclers results in a take home pay of approximately £2 per day, or less.

Figure 8 Slightly wealthier street recyclers advertising their services on the front of the tricycles in the city of Hangzhou; their scales can be seen in the bike basket on the left

Generally, solid residential waste can be categorised into many broad areas, as shown in Table 1. Household waste is considered more complex than industrial and agricultural waste simply because it contains a much more complex variety of items. Industrial waste streams tend be narrower in their components, but not necessarily easier to treat. In terms of solid waste from the various Chinese municipalities, each item has a corresponding price which the buyers pay to the residents to obtain. The recycling depots then hopefully pay more for the waste resources, and this is how the collectors make their earnings.

The items listed in Table 1 range from those recyclables that make the most money (copper) to those worth the least (glass, timber and used pieces of furniture). Considering that many street recyclers make some $2–4 per day, you can see that it takes multiple heavy loads each day of typical rubbish consisting of paper and cardboard (Figure 9) to match the profit that could be gained from one large load of scrap wiring. Obviously, as prices of these commodities fluctuate in the market, this in turn means that the earnings of each collector also go up and down.

Table 1 Recyclables and their average prices in Beijing

Recyclables	Price ($US per kg) paid to residents
Copper	3.33
Brass (copper and zinc)	1.93
Alnico (aluminium/nickel/cobalt alloys)	1.56
Soft drink cans	1.12
Plastic water bottles	0.73
Plastic soft drink bottles	0.57
Plastic cooking oil bottles	0.45
Plastic	0.31
Steel	0.22
Paper	0.15
Books	0.14
Chipboard	0.10
Glass bottles	0.04
Timber	0.02
Used furniture/machine	*

Adapted from Wang et al., 2008.

Figure 9 A cardboard collection depot in a very desirable area in Hong Kong. It might be hard to imagine such an image in London, where land values are very much higher

Activity 1 Exploring uncollected household wastes in China

What types of household-generated solid wastes do you think might be missing from Table 1, and why?

Answer

I noted that textiles, batteries and hazardous wastes were not mentioned in the table, and I began to think about why this might be. Disposal of these things was either specialist or dangerous or, in the case of rags, perhaps not profitable. Rags (or used clothing items) also seem to be missing from the table, and considering the demand for used clothing in the UK this might come as a surprise. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the majority of people in China use their clothing items much longer than in the Western world and continue to reuse them in some other form in the household (for rags, cleaning or stuffing) rather than sell them on as a commodity. You may well have thought of other equally relevant items.

Batteries are certainly one thing not shown in Table 1, despite being recyclable and containing useful resource materials. Batteries, however, are also difficult to recycle and in many cases contain both solid and liquid components. When batteries rupture or are broken they can leak acid into their surrounding environment. There are also no hazardous wastes listed, such as pesticides or chemicals or paints. Again these probably require some type of disposal permit or specialist knowledge. For paints or pesticides, perhaps these items are in such demand that there is virtually no waste generated as nearly all of the product gets applied or utilised fully.

Figure 10 (a) A tricycle about to be unloaded at an impromptu recycling depot in Beijing. The depot is collecting plastic bottles and other plastic items for recycling and transporting them to the factory in very large plastic mesh bags (on the right). (b) Ad hoc recycling centre in an alley. This recycler is sorting items and weighing the plastics using the scale on the right-hand side of the picture

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

3.4 Rising waste levels from around the globe

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

Many recycling systems all over the world use similar ways of sorting waste for reuse. A snapshot of 19 European countries, along with 12 other countries, is shown in Table 2; this gives an indication of the type and level of materials that get recycled.

Although not shown here, it is clear that much of our own rubbish ends up elsewhere for reprocessing, whether it be plastic, paper or e-waste. In the case of the UK, China takes about half of our paper, and 80% of recovered plastics (WRAP, 2008). In terms of overall CO₂ emissions, even when transport to China is included it is much better to recycle overseas than to use ‘new’ material to produce virgin plastics. This argument is further strengthened by the import–export imbalance for countries like the UK and China, whereby some ships leaving the UK might otherwise be empty.

Recycling in China at best provides little more than subsistence at the street level, and to generate a living requires working seven days a week in all weathers. Many Chinese, especially from this group of ex-peasant farmers turned recyclers, have recent memories of very hard times indeed; their lives were afflicted by natural disasters such as famines, droughts or flooding as well as the impact of living under a centralised economy. Undoubtedly, economic liberalisation has created much opportunity in China; people now have choices that they never had before, and even among people whose life looks hard to us there is a belief among most street recyclers that things are getting better. As wealth and consumption grow in China, then the overall levels of waste generation and energy consumption must also surely increase. This growth at the potential expense of their environment and, by extension, our environment, is undoubtedly one of the great challenges facing both those in China and those of us ‘outside’ of China.

Table 2 Municipal waste generated and waste treatment rates from selected countries

Country	Annual waste generated (kg per person)	Landfilled (%)	Incinerated (%)	Recycled (%)	Composted (%)
Belgium	492	4	34	39	23
Czech Republic	294	84	13	2	1
Denmark	801	5	53	24	17
Germany	564	1	35	46	18
Ireland	786	64	0	34	2
Greece	448	84	0	14	2
Spain	588	60	10	13	17
France	541	34	36	16	14
Italy	550	46	11	11	33
Cyprus	754	87	0	13	0
Luxembourg	694	25	47	0	28
Hungary	456	77	9	13	1
Malta	652	93	0	2	5
Netherlands	630	3	38	32	28
Austria	597	13	28	21	38
Portugal	472	63	19	8	10
Romania	379	99	0	1	0
Sweden	518	4	47	37	12
United Kingdom	572	57	9	22	12
EU27 (average)	522	42	20	22	17
United States	750	54	14	24	8
Japan	426	3	74	17	0
Rep. of Korea	380	36	14	49	0
China	115	43	3	–	5
Australia	445	70	0	30	0
Canada	416	73	–	27	13
Brazil	328	63	< 1	1	4
Cuba	392	84	0	5	11
Iceland	499	72	9	16	9
Lebanon	375	42	–	3	8
Niger	722	64	12	4	–
Singapore	1153	16	45	39	0

Sources: For EU27 countries see Europa, 2009. For other countries (2000–2005) see United Nations Statistics Division, 2009

Activity 2 Waste habits

You have now read about two very different waste situations, that in Lugu Lake (Box 2) and that of recycling at the street level in most major cities in China (Section 3). Compare and contrast both situations with respect to the principles in the waste hierarchy (Box 1). How do either of these cases compare with your own household waste habits and what your local council, city or area offers?

Answer

The first is as in the village case study, whereby the villagers simply dump their waste on a mountain (or in an ‘informal landfill’). The second, as demonstrated by the street recyclers, is to make a business out of garbage and treat the unwanted waste as potentially useful materials to be re-fed into another production stream (Figures 10 (a) and (b)). The first possibly echoes our own previous historical approach, the second what we are being encouraged to aim for in terms of reuse within the waste hierarchy. The street recyclers also demonstrate differentiation of recycling – some collect plastic, others metal etc. My city has black bins for landfill waste, green bins for compostable waste (including a wide range of meat-related wastes and cardboard/paper) along with plastic, glass and paper recycling. Our council requires us to recycle and tries to encourage people to use less if possible by providing information about waste generated each year. I have heard that some councils are considering charging for waste by weighing it but I have not seen this in action yet.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

Conclusion

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

China's enormous increase in manufacturing has brought with it an increase in the output of wastes. These arise not only from the production process but also during the use of the products by consumers. Depending on where and how these wastes are deposited, they may just be dumped, creating pollution problems. But in urban China, a separate industry has grown up around the recovery of wastes to be used as raw materials. Waste management is an increasing need worldwide, and understanding the hierarchy of wastes, as well as the overall global flows of goods and wastes, helps with this process.

This unit has considered waste streams from a rapidly developing country as well as municipal waste from other countries in order to make reader more familiar with solid waste in general. It introduced two case studies highlighting different ways of dealing with growing waste levels.

It demonstrates the link between waste and household income and how waste composition changes over time with increasing wealth. The unit also emphasizes the differences in waste from urban and rural areas, and the different ways that different countries and cities handle their waste. In some cases the waste system is a formalised system using city council endorsed labour whereas in other cases informal labour and collection practices are dominant.

The waste hierarchy, with the levels of reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, and dispose, sits at the very core of many waste management systems but in some regions the immediate concern might be on controlling the amount of waste, or the immediate health hazards posed by the wastes. Waste occurs in many forms and poses different environmental impacts as it flows from country to country and whether it is controlled or uncontrolled. Managing our waste levels and types is of key importance in order to create a more sustainable environment.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

Next steps

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

After completing this unit you may wish to study another OpenLearn Study Unit or find out more about this topic. Here are a few suggestions:

If you wish to study formally at The Open University, you may wish to explore the courses we offer in this curriculum area:

Or find out about studying and developing your skills with The Open University:

Or you might like to:

Post a message to the unit forum, to share your thoughts about the unit or talk to other OpenLearners
Review or add to your Learning Journal
Rate this unit

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

References

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

Defra (2008) Environmental Permitting, Department for Environment, Food and RuralAffairs, London.

Europa (2009) ‘Municipal waste’, http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=STAT/09/31&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en (Accessed 7 October 2009).

Hoornweg, D., Lam, P. and Chaudhry, M. (2005) ‘Waste management in China: issues and recommendations’, May, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEAPREGTOPURBDEV/Resources/China-Waste-Management1.pdf (Accessed 3 August 2009).

Official Journal of the European Union (2008) Directive on Waste and Repealing Certain Directives. 2008/98/EC, L312: 3-30.

Sinclair, N. (2008a), ‘Recycling, poverty and climate change’, Final Report to Winston Churchill Memorial Trust travel fellowship to Hong Kong and China, February 2008, 25 pp.

Sinclair, N. (2008b) Megacycle, Blurb Publishing, 160 pp. See http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/432956

Song, T. (2006) ‘Why can you drink a bottle of mineral water at any street corner of any city?: the transformation chain of matter and energy of the global in the age of limited earth’, Chinese Book Review Monthly, vol. 1, pp. 18–21.

United Nations Statistics Division (2009) ‘Municipal waste treatment’, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/wastetreatment.htm (Accessed 7 October 2009).

Wagner, L.A. (2002) ‘Materials in the economy – material flows, scarcity, and the environment’, US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey, US Geological Survey Circular 1221.

WRAP (2008) ‘CO₂ impacts of transporting the UK’s recovered paper and plastic bottles to China’, Waste and Resources Action Programme, final report, August 2008, 28 pp. http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/CO₂_Impact_of_Export_Report_v8_1Aug08.e8b35f0d.5760.pdf (Accessed 7 October 2009).

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /

Acknowledgements

The Open University — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:01:20 GMT

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements are due to Nick Sinclair, Professor Tian Song, and all those who helped contribute to the case studies and stories used in the Unit.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:

Figures

Table

Table 2: Adapted from Troschinetz (2009) Waste Management, Elsevier

Text

Hauer, A. (2004) Seminar paper: The Ecological Civilization Imperative in the Age of Limited Earth. Why can we drink a bottle of mineral water on any street corner of any city?

Unit image

Don’t miss out:

1. Join the 200,000 students currently studying with The Open University.

2. Enjoyed this? Browse through our host of free course materials on LearningSpace.

3. Or browse more topics on OpenLearn.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence /