Formal and informal approaches

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FORMAL AND INFORMAL APPROACHES

_{WASTE RECOVERY IN CHINA}




WASTE MATERIALS re­covered from general refuse in Asian cities are mostly gathered and traded informally by waste pickers, or by mu­nicipal workers as a side­line in their jobs. China is the only country with an extensive state-controlled waste re­covery system. Nevertheless, there is an in­formal economy of solid wastes in China, and it has become more important as administra­tive and economic changes are eroding the base of the state system. In the next few years, bureaucrats, municipal engineers, and waste recovery managers are likely to dis­cuss whether the state system can continue to function as it was designed to in the 1950s.¹

China's official system of waste recovery was set up under the Ministry of Commerce explicitly to increase recovery and develop more uses for wastes, because of great re­source scarcity. The largest recovery compa­nies, of which there are nine, are provincial in scope (although they are administered by the metropolitan governments). They deal with

When the state-controlled system for recycling wastes in China proved to be too inflexible, informal pickers and traders steadily expanded their roles.

Christine Furedy

Informal traders deal with waste materials that many companies no longer process. (Photo by C. Furedy).

all kinds of wastes, including industrial ma­terials. They sort, and to some extent pro­cess, wastes and channel them to industries. In the major cities, beneath the waste recov­ery companies are district depots. These col­lect wastes from neighborhood centers, re­ceive wastes from offices, factories and shops, and organize resale and transport ei­ther directly to factories or to the recovery companies. Neighborhood stations used to be conveniently distributed throughout the cities, mainly to buy the reusable/recyclable materials of households or shops. They may be owned and operated by the Ministry of Commerce or cooperatively run by the neigh­borhood.

Other components of the system are agents who collect materials, especially in ur­ban fringe areas and villages. In addition to the official agents, individuals making a liv­ing from waste collection can sell materials either to official agents or to depots.²

One cannot be sure exactly how many cen­ters for waste recovery exist now, because of recent changes. Two years ago, there were said to be about 98,000 recovery points alto­gether, which included the nine large compa­nies, 165 prefecture or city depots's, 110 county ones, and the neighborhood centres. There were also 400-450 workshops engaged in processing waste materials employing be­tween 300,000 and 500,000 people.

Presentations at conferences by Chinese officials, and tours given to visiting experts have impressed the noncommunist world with statistics about the amounts recovered and processed through this system. From 1956 (when the system was fully operating) until 1986, the Ministry is said to have recov­ered over 200 million tons of wastes, repre­senting a saving of 410 billion yuan for the state. The regional company most often

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BioCycle

June 1990

WASTE RECOVERY IN CHINA

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quoted and displayed is the Shanghai Mate­rials Recovery Company, which, until the late 1980s had 16,000 employees proper and an­other 8,000 agents operating in rural and ur­ban fringe areas. There were, then, over 500 city purchasing depots with another 1500 in the rural areas.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Exemplary though it is, however, the sys­tem of waste recovery and circulation in China has always suffered from some organi­zational, financial and technical weaknesses. Some are common to waste trading any­where, some derive from China's centrally-controlled economy, and some are intrinsic to the organization set up in the 1950s.

Demand for waste materials by industries is subject to unpredictable fluctuations. The Ministry of Commerce is not flexible in set­ting prices, so that low prices may be set for some wastes at times when they are scarce nationally or locally; some prices have not varied significantly for years. In addition, there are many rules governing trade be­tween cities in China; for instance, paper and construction materials cannot be traded. Lack of communication among the recovery companies and the difficulties and expense of transportation add to these problems.

In the bureaucratic structure, there is no connection between the city sanitation bu­reaus, which are responsible for collecting and disposing of wastes, and the depart­ments that administer the recovery compa­nies. This hinders any cooperation between the solid waste management systems, the waste recovery, and recycling industries. Waste recovery has, until now, been thought of as serving the needs of industry, not as having a role in waste reduction (Le. in sav­ing collection costs and reducing the need for dumping space).

At the top of the system, there is no coor­dination either. Each regional center oper­ates independently. The special research in­stitutes may be unaware of the practical needs of the recovery companies. Among the difficulties mentioned to me by recovery company managers were: Problems in get­ting the wastes they wanted at the time they could best use them; Lack of processing and packaging equipment (most work is done by manual labor, and some work is hazardous); Low productivity of the workforce; Inability to provide more incentives for cooperation by the public; Lack of space and vehicles; Poor working conditions; and Difficulties in recruiting workers.

CLOSURE OF NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS

The way the companies operate has, in the past decade, been affected by the require­ment that enterprises be profitable, pay more taxes, and base their wages and bo­nuses on their profits, Le. become "commer­cialized." The costs of operating the compa­nies have increased, but not the prices they

can get for many of the wastes they handle. This has prompted the companies to concen­trate on the valuable and steady-demand ma­terials (predominantly metals). They have be­come erratic in accepting the less valuable ones that required much sorting time (e.g. rags, glass pieces, scraps of plastic).

Since the small neighborhood depots have limited space for storing wastes, they cannot take in materials that are not swiftly passed on to the higher level companies. Hence they are forced to turn away householders who bring items not wanted by the companies. The uncertainty discourages people and, be­sides, the prices paid by the centers for wastes have not risen proportionately to ur­ban wages, so that the financial gain for the trouble of taking materials to the local cen­ters has dwindled, just when new consumer styles are creating more wastes. Conse­quently, some neighborhood collection de­pots and even district centers have closed down: Shanghai had only about 200 neigh­borhood centers in 1988 reduced from over 600; Beijing has lost half of its centers and now has only 200/

FREE ENTERPRISE TO THE RESCUE?

The materials that are eluding the redemp­tion centers are not yet altogether lost to Chinese industries and households. They are being gathered from wastestreams by "free collectors/' who are usually migrants from very poor rural areas. Like waste collectors in other Asian cities, they may go from door-to-door (with handcarts or bicycle carts), re­trieve from waste bins and streets, or fre­quent dump sites.

The increasing unemployment as the com­mune system breaks up and nonviable enter­prises dose down means that there are liter­ally millions of people, lacking urban skills, who are seeking work, and, as happens in other developing countries, some find waste gathering to be an easy entry point in city life. As plastics and bottles are appearing at dumps, pickers are to be found in greater numbers there. In 1988 there was even a small colony of squatters on one Beijing dump specializing in the recovery of plastics. In the same year, it was estimated that Shanghai had at least 10,000 free collectors.

OFFICIAL REACTION

By late 1988, some Chinese municipal offi­cials were beginning to express concern about free enterprise in urban wastes. They fear health and social problems, especially associated with dump picking. Yet, some rec­ognize that the informal system is saving precious resources while the state system is unable to meet its original broad goals.

Can the state system be restructured and rejuvenated?

No one likes to make predictions about trends in China in the next few years. It seems likely, however, that attempts will be made to revamp the state system of waste recovery. China is proud of the network of re­covery, processing and reuse/recycling opera­tions that has saved the country many re­sources since the late 1950s.

Informal waste trading enterprises can be seen on the pavements of back streets in large cities, with banners advertising the purchase of all types of solid waste-


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June 1990 83

Already local attempts are being made to build new incentives into the system. In Beijing, for instance, the Eastern district center runs draws of tickets dispensed to co­operating citizens; department store dis­count coupons are given to the winners. Managers are trying to create bonuses and rewards for their workers.

Several suggestions have been made for substantial change at recent waste manage­ment conferences. The recovery companies could be recognized as having an environ­mental as well as an industrial role. This would be compatible with the environmental protection laws. The companies could be re­leased from the requirements governing nor­mal enterprises; they could receive subsidies and more technical assistance. The system could be coordinated nationally, and deci­sions on waste recovery and recycling could be integrated into national environmental planning. Urban sanitation bureaus could in­stitute source separation programs, deliver the recyclable and reusable materials to the recovery companies, and the residues to low-cost composting plants.

One other option has been voiced but not yet generally discussed: free enterprise in waste collecting and trading could be recog­nized and regulated as legitimate work. This is seen as a way to overcome the social order issues of waste trading, while retaining the useful services of the new types of collectors and traders.

The first step is for Chinese planners to better understand the ways that wastes are recovered, traded, and used throughout the country, and to estimate how changes in solid wastes and in waste recovery affect the economy and environment." ■

RERRENCES

1. The information for this article was gathered during a study tour on solid waste recycling of five cities (Beijing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Science and Hu­manities Research Council of Canada in 1988 and at the International Experts Meeting on Manag­ing Solid Wastes in the Context of Metropolitan Development and management organized in Beij­ing, September 1988, by the United Nations Centre for Regional Development and the Chinese Re­search Academy of Environmental Sciences,

2 For a case study of Wuchang district in Wu­han city, see Sun, H. C. and Furedy, C, "Research Recovery in Chinese Cities," Resource Recycling vol. VIII, March/April, 1989, pp. 3031; 52-63.

3. Yang, S. "Municipal Solid Waste Management in Beijing: Present Status and Future Tasks," Re­gional Development Dialogue; vol. 10, no. 3, Au­tumn, 1989, pp. 113-138.

Christine Furedy is Associate Professor in the Urban Studies Programme. York University, Toronto, Canada.

June 1990