Your Christmas Lights Head to China, and Back Again
Reporting on his observations from a factory in Shijiao, Junkyard Planet author Adam Minter...
recycling
How America’s Trash Becomes China’s Treasure
Bloomberg Businessweek has published a lengthy excerpt from contributor Adam Minter’s...
‘Gutter Oil’ Expected to Fuel Shanghai Buses
One of China’s ongoing food safety scandals involves the illegal recycling, repackaging, and reuse of cooking oil — which after crude processing is known as “gutter oil” (地沟油). In the midst of an ongoing food...
Recycling America’s Christmas Lights
China’s hunger for materials and its powerful economies of scale can make a viable business of recycling what would occupy landfills elsewhere. At The Atlantic, Adam Minter describes the town of Shijiao, whose factories...
China’s Big Recycling Market Is Sagging
China’s recycling industry has taken a hit from the global economic crisis, as commodity prices sharply decrease. From Dan Levin of the New York Times: Each morning Tian Wengui emerges from the home he makes under a bridge...
Robbie Williams Records to Pave Chinese Roads
From contactmusic.com: The solo star’s record label EMI has confirmed that over one million copies of RUDEBOX will be crushed and sent to the country to be recycled. The products will be used in street lighting and road...
China’s Recycling ‘Saves Forests’ – BBC
It appears not every bit of environmental news out of China bespeaks disaster. A new report from Forest Trends, an NGO, credits Chinese willingness to use recycled waste paper with the salvation of millions of tons’ worth of forests worldwide: “Just last year, China’s use of waste-paper instead of trees to make paper products probably […]
Study Praises China’s Paper Recycling – Michael Casey
From Associated Press from Examiner.com: China’s booming recycling industry is helping to slow the destruction of forests worldwide, providing a strong market for wastepaper that mostly comes from the United States and Europe , according to a study released Friday. But the report from the Washington-based Forest Trends also warns that despite the trees spared […]
eDump: A Multimedia Site About Electronic Waste – Michael Zhao
Today Reuters reports on Guiyu, a Chinese e-wasteland: Guiyu is a modern day gold rush town. But instead of panning for gold in babbling streams, workers shift through piles of broken old computer parts in acrid smelling shacks, smelting down parts with crude equipment to extract valuable metals like gold and copper. [Full text] For […]
Waste land – Jonathan Watts and Jess Cartner-Morley
From Guardian Unlimited: …Here in Mai, a village in Guangdong Province, southern China, a community of recyclers ekes out a living from items considered so worthless in the west that they are given away free and quickly discarded. Carrier bags and bottles are shipped here from London, Rotterdam, Hong Kong and cities within China for […]
Village Tired of Foreign Garbage – China Daily
From China Daily (photo: garbage treatment plant dumping waste water into a ditch, via Chinanews.com.cn): Lianjiao (ËÅîʪòÊùë) is already home to about 200,000 tons of waste plastic and 500,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard from both overseas and home. The quality of its air and water have declined because of pollutants unleashed by the […]
Blowing the Lid Off a Hot Commodity – Bob Pool
From the Los Angeles Times: Global commerce is neatly wrapped for Christmas on the streets of Toytown. In cardboard boxes. Thousands of the corrugated containers filled with Chinese-made vinyl dolls, plastic action figures, electronic gadgets, video games, clothing and die-cast cars pour daily into wholesale and retail toy shops in a dozen-block area on the […]
China risks becoming world hi-tech waste bin
From China Daily Online: China has become a major dumping ground for electronic waste and risks becoming the world’s high-tech waste bin, posing hazards for people and the environment, Greenpeace warned… Although China has banned electronic waste from being imported, companies still export the waste there illegally while a lot more is generated domestically, said […]
Asia Times: China’s green drive
From Asia Times, two articles, “Striving for sustainable development” and “Back to ‘circular economy‘”, about efforts at sustainable development in China: It has finally dawned on Beijing that requiring local officials to meet growth targets regardless of the environmental cost is turning China into an ecological train wreck. In a belated effort to address the […]
T.J. Zheng: China’s Green Quandary
From the Electronic Buyers News: Supreme leader Deng Xiaoping unleashed the rewards ” and curses ” of capitalism on China more than two decades ago when he declared, “To get rich is glorious.” Today China has opened up its economy in all but the most sensitive areas to reap the benefits of free markets. But […]
China to Develop a Recycling Program
China, with its extremely large population and declining amount of resources, has noticed a need for an effective recycling program. China’s government now is focusing on making sure factories are using clean resources and reusing resources. To check out the entire article, click here.
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