There are more than one hundred thousand people working in China’s recycling industry, and it’s a hard way to make a living—even more so now that China’s central government is implementing stricter environmental laws.
However, trash and recycling are a big business in China. Some estimate that it is a fourteen billion dollar business for a family driven cottage industry.
Long hours of hard work add up to a living wage for the Chinese involved in this recycling business.
According to a recent United Nations report, “China now appears to be the largest e-waste dumping site in the world.”
The collected recyclable material is taken from the city for a few hour drive to factories where the trash is turned into raw material for a second life.
In fact, “We sell this plastic to Foxconn,” a recycle worker says.
And the recyclables just don’t come from China’s cities. It comes from all over the world, since China is the world’s largest importer of trash.
Computers and bottles tossed in recycle bins in the US, often show up in China where they are processed then resold as a new product to Western countries.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.
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Interesting. Given the way things are going, trash is going to be the world’s BIGGEST industry … if it isn’t already!
I found this: “The Bureau of International Recycling estimates that the recycling sector employs more than 1.5 million people in the processing of million tons of commodities, with industry revenue topping in excess of $200 billion every year.” http://www.reportlinker.com/ci01342/Recycling.html