Comments on: Professional Recycling

By: James Hall

James Hall — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:49:57 +0000

The basic issue is low wages.

The wage diiference between working stiffs is much bigger than most developed countries.

Also, the unempoyment is another reason.

By: Inst

Inst — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:36:02 +0000

I’ve seen homeless bottle collectors, racially white, running around Chinese ghettos overseas. It’s pretty easy to create a market for refuse recyclers; all you need is to stamp a large deposit, maybe 25 cents USD, on soda bottles.

By: Chip

Chip — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:25:50 +0000

The main reason why China can have this, and developed countries like the US and UK can’t, is because of wages and regulations. In terms of economics, I tend to support free wages, less government regulation. Although I might sound like a bad person for saying this, but a large cause of the problem is the existence of minimum wages. It is impossible to pay somebody 5.25 an hour to pick up trash the way it is is picked up in China(it’s not worth it), and so that job simply doesn’t exist. Ofcourse, you can set up efficient systems that put more of the work on the individual consumers (such as the above mentioned bin-seperating thing where home owners have to sort the trash themselves), but as a whole people are less likely to do something that doesn’t make economic sense.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:55:31 +0000

Darcy,

Usually the ones that shout out are collecting used electronics. That’s been my experience, at least.

By: Darcy

Darcy — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:50:25 +0000

When I was living in Dalian, there was a guy who would ride his bike through our apartment complex every afternoon, calling out something that was (to my poorly trained ears) fairly unintelligible. Took my flatmates and me ages to realize he was letting the neighborhood know he was coming around to get any recyclables that people might have that day, though now I can’t remember which items this particular guy collected.

By: Edward

Edward — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:00:07 +0000

I do not know what to say.There are seriouse problems about employment in China,so are the college graduates.
If you have been to a Employment Fair,you would see so many graduates unemployed.
The population in China has been a huge obstacle in accelerating China’s development.FOR my owe part,I think China would have been a developped country without the big population

By: Nicki

Nicki — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 08:43:45 +0000

We’ve actually had these professional recyclers come to blows over who could take our trash. It was a little scary.

By: ChinaEconomist

ChinaEconomist — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:30:33 +0000

Excellent post. As the writier of a China economics blog I hope you don’t mind be reposting and linking (and throwing in a few comments).

http://china-economics-blog.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-in-china-recycling-for-living.html

Keep up the good work – a well written and interesting blog.

By: chinaqanda

chinaqanda — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 12:52:28 +0000

Many local authorities in the UK are now forcing households to seperate their trash (bottles/plastics/aluminium cans etc) which is great until you consider the fact that people are basically paying (via council tax) for people to come and collect what is, in fact, a possible source of income. Here in China I keep all my empty cans and bottles and about every month or so sell them to a professional recycler. It’s ironic that developed countries bang on about the environment yet waste so much, while here in China so little actually goes to waste. (ok I know that’s a broad generalization but you get my drift). In this respect China is well ahead of the west. That being said there’s still no excuse for the shocking amount of littering here.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:06:42 +0000

In the little community where I live (pretty much all old people), there are official trash collectors / sorters, and then the guys who sneak in during the middle of the night to get stuff as well. Kind of crazy that there is that much competition for people’s trash – especially as the place I live isn’t exactly your wealthy Shanghai people.