Although it is a rural village, familiar scenes are missing here. There is not a chicken, duck or even stalk of wheat straw or a piece of firewood in sight. In their stead are piles of scrap steel, aluminium, plastic, waste wire, and heaps of mixed waste awaiting disposal. The threshing fields where farmers used to air their grain are now covered with brass wire or pieces of steel picked out of the mass of waste.

In the village of Baifeng'ao in Taizhou on the east coast of east China's Zhejiang Province, a driving force in the country's private economy, nearly all of the 600 households in the village are engaged in waste recycling one way or another. When the village is short of hands, outsiders throng in.

"I've been working here for five years," says Wu Dongbao, a migrant worker from neighboring Jiangxi Province, which is less developed. Day in and day out, he sits in front of a simple brick building rented from some local people, hacking away at the piles of waste electric products for any bits of metal or plastic that are still of value.

"If the prices for metals remain stable, a couple can make 10,000 yuan (US$1,205) a year here, much more than we earn from farming back home," says the 34-year-old. Over 20 people from his home village are working here.

Waste reclamation has grown into an efficient business in the village since the work was taken up in the early 1990s. Traders come once a month to buy recovered metal and plastic. Truckloads of waste keep arriving on a regular basis.

The village charges the scrap collectors a fee. "An adult worker has to pay 20 yuan (US$2.4) a year for the right to pick garbage. It's not a small sum given that there are more than 5,000 migrant workers, far outnumbering the 3,000 local inhabitants," said Wu, whose five-year-old daughter was playing besides him.

In addition, each migrant household pays about 300 yuan (US$36) a year for their residence in the village, as well as a monthly rent of from 300 yuan (US$36) to 400 yuan (US$48). These charges add millions of yuan to the village's coffers.

The 1,000 or so migrant families nevertheless have no intention of leaving, because their earnings far exceed their expenses. "We don't care much about the heavy workload so long as there is money to earn. Sometimes we work 15 to 16 hours a day," said a woman worker who would not reveal her name.

However, the city of Taizhou is about to stop such household recycling as such primitive methods of waste treatment are putting the environment at stake.

"From three to five years ago, wire burning could be seen nearly everywhere along the national highway, not to say in inland villages," said Ruan Menghe, head of Taizhou's environmental protection administration.

To save the environment from further deterioration, environment authorities have started to supervise enterprises in the business, issuing licences only to those equipped to handle waste reclamation in an environmentally clean way.

By 2003, 10 designated enterprises in Taizhou were placed in a 7.3-hectare reclamation zone, where wastewater is treated and electric motors are incinerated using methods that minimize the hazardous impact on the environment.

Early this year, a 106.7-hectare Taizhou Metal Recycling & Processing Zone was set up about 10 minutes' ride from the village of Baifeng'ao. The standardized workshops, which cost 620 million yuan (US$74.7 million) to build, now host 22 large enterprises, some of them joint ventures, all engaged in waste reclamation.

"The cement floor here eliminates the leakage of oil or other waste residues into the soil or water. Incinerators are of a specified standard to minimize air pollution," said Ruan, the official.

The enterprises' reclamation capacity far outstrips that of household recyclers'. Chiho-Tiande Metals Co Ltd, the first and largest enterprise in the recycling zone, for instance, covers an area of 13.33 hectares.

"From waste we can retrieve ferrous and non-ferrous metals, precious metals, plastics and rubber. Actually 98 percent of the waste can be reused after processing," says Ding Guopei, general manager of the company whose 1,500 workers recycle usable materials from 200,000 tons of waste annually.

And work does not end there. Recovered aluminium is processed into ingots in Ding's factory and half of the products are exported. "Our annual output value is around 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million), and we pay 100 million yuan (US$12 million) in taxes every year," Ding added proudly.

In Taizhou, a total of 1.5 million tons of scrap computer hardware, electrical appliances and motors were handled in 2003, with 350,000 tons of raw copper and 250,000 tons of aluminium being recovered, said Lu Mengsu, deputy director of the office for comprehensive utilization of resources under the Taizhou City Economic Commission.

He calculates that the amount of copper alone retrieved from waste each year totals nine times the output of the Fuchunjiang Smeltery in Zhejiang Province, not to mention that the method produces less pollution, consumes less energy, and on top of this saves mineral resources.

"It takes 200 tons of ore to produce 1 ton of copper. But our copper comes from waste rather than ores," Lu says.

Currently Taizhou's earnings from the recycling business amount to 6 billion yuan (US$720 million) annually, 55 percent of the city's total revenue of 10.87 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion).

The utilization of recovered plastics, copper, aluminium, silicon and stainless steel as raw materials for the manufacture of electric wire, cable, electric motors, water pumps, motor cycle fittings, and valves in turn drives the city's entire manufacturing and processing industry, producing an added value of over 4 billion yuan (US$480 million).

"Recycling, or the circular economy as we call it, plays a decisive role in the economy of Taizhou, a predominantly mountainous region with few natural resources that we can take advantage of," explains Mao Rijing, a researcher with the city's economic commission.

Taizhou is a manufacturing base for valves, water pumps, and plastic moulds, which have won more than half of the domestic market.

"And all this is linked with the scrap reclamation business, which has grown from a disordered state into an industry of scale and standard, offering over 100,000 job opportunities to people," Mao stresses.

Skilled labour, like Wu from Jiangxi, and from Sichuan, Hunan and Guizhou provinces coupled with the flexible operating mechanism of private sector industry have contributed greatly to the expansion of the recycling business.

Data from the State Statistical Bureau shows that, starting from 2003, at least 5 million TV sets, 4 million refrigerators and 6 million washing machines become obsolete every year. At present, about 5 million computers and tens of millions of mobile phones are now junk.

"We should focus more on recycling of domestic waste," suggests Shan Wei, deputy chief of the supervision department with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China.

A pilot project has been started by Qingdao Hai'er Group Co, China's leading manufacturer of household electric appliances, on possible ways to retrieve its products when they are obsolete, as an extension of the responsibility of the producer.

China's top legislature is also trying to amend its current law on the prevention of solid waste pollution to regulate the disposal methods of certain new types of electric and electronic appliances to prevent damage to the environment.

"Natural resources may dry up someday. We have to find ways to reuse our resources to keep our economy and environment sustainable," says Shan.

On the other hand, Shan says, the hazardous impact on environment should be minimized through monitoring waste dismantling and processing enterprises.

"It's relatively easy to monitor enterprises handling waste, as we can revoke their business licences for any malpractice or under-the-table dealing. But the household workshops scattered far and wide can be a big headache as environmental administrations are not authorized to oversee their treatment," says Ruan Menghe, head of Taizhou's environmental authorities.

He says the city plans to gather sporadic household recyclers into designated venues to ensure environmental standards. "But this takes time and they are often on the move, which makes it difficult to keep up with them."

(China Daily June 15, 2004)