Living with e-waste China’s e-waste recyclers and their life

Photo/Text by Kim Kyung-Hoon

LIVING WITH E-WASE

! Chapter 1. China’s urban mining business!! China is leading the league of the recycling industry

As the world’s population and consumption increases, the mound of waste is growing. According to the Guardian’s recent report, more than 4 billion tonnes of waste (municipal, industrial and hazardous) is generated annually worldwide. Only one-quarter of this is recycled or recovered. If so, where does the rest of the garbage all go? How and where is the garbage recycled? !In describing and quantifying the global waste trade including illegal trading, China is the top destination for waste. China imported around 7.4 million tonnes of discarded plastic, 28 million tonnes of waste paper and 5.8 million tonnes of steel scrap between 2000 and 2008. In the same period, European exports of plastic waste increased by 250% – and about 87% of these exports ended up in China (including Hong Kong). In this waste market, which is estimated to be worth $443 billion a year, China is leading the league.

China is leading the league of the recycling

A worker stands next a stack of metal scrapat a

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For example, one top export from the U.S to China has been garbage including everything from scrap metals, abandoned papers, cardboard and plastic bottles since 2007. The U.S. sold about $10.8 billion worth of metal and paper scrap to China in 2011.

Flow of E-waste in East Asia and the Pacific (from United Nations)

Why has China imported the garbage? And what do they use this imported garbage for? As China has industrialized, its demand for resources has risen. In the industrial process, scrap materials and plastic waste are processed to be recycled as an essential material needed for manufacturing. Along with this trend, China's recycling industry has boomed over the past 20 years. China’s manufacturers have needed the metal, paper and plastic and Beijing has been tolerant of the environmental cost of getting this resource through recycling. Millions of tons of discarded plastic, computers, electronics, newspapers and shredded automobiles and appliances are imported every year from the United States, Europe and Japan and sold to local recyclers.

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If you travel around the outskirts of Beijing, you can see the effects of the boom in the recycling business. Even in the capital of China, there are many small-sized recycling depots (usually illegal) which largely rely on China’s cheap manual labor market. Quantifying the size of the Chinese garbage industry and its workers is difficult because only a limited number of businesses are licensed. Through this cheap and mostly illegal labor, garbage is converted into new resources for cheap Chinese-made products.

For this recycling process, abandoned garbage must undergo the following process: 1. sort, 2. shred, 3. wash, 4. melt, and 5. pelletize. !The first process is most important. There are more than four different types of plastics such as degradable, biodegradable plastics, compostable and bio-based plastics. If these different plastic materials are mixed in the melting process, the recycling process fails.

Therefore cheap labor in undeveloped countries plays a major part in the sorting of randomly abandoned plastics. In China, there are a reported 167 million migrant workers who are available for low-paying manual jobs. These labor groups support China’s recycling business. According to the World Bank’s report, about 2.5 million people in China work in the “informal garbage management sector” and they pick through trash for recyclable materials to sell. Cheap labor breaks down and sifts through junked materials and scrap metals and searches for valuable recyclable materials.

A worker separates plastic wastes at a recycling depot in Beijing June 4, 2014

LIVING WITH E-WASEFor instance, when we have a junked car, the only profitable way to recycle a motor in the car is to break it down manually. Workers dig into garbage cans on the street and mountains of garbage in landfills. For them, picking up garbage such as plastic bottles and cardboard is like mining. So Chinese call it “urban mining”.

A garbage collector scans abandoned recycling depot with a metal detector at Dongxiaokou village in Beijing May 18, 2014.

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It does not require any skill and it is a very affordable job for many migrant workers who have just come to an urban area looking for unskilled work. When a Chinese cargo ship arrives in Europe or America full of “made-in-China” manufactured goods, it is profitable for the carrier to fill the ship with low-value scrap rather than having it return empty. The imported garbage is sold to local recycling wholesale dealers. Then the garbage is sold or distributed to the trash collectors specializing in different kinds of waste: paper, rubber, metal and plastics.

A recycling worker stands in the yard of a tenement house at Dongxiaokou village in Beijing May 28, 2014.

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In Beijing alone, an estimated 160,000 collectors make a living from recycling plastic sheeting, office printouts, bottles, radiators, scraps of cardboard and other recyclable stuff. Also the Chinese government’s loose recycling industry rules and the Chinese people’s lack of understanding about environmental issues has boosted their recycling business in the last decades.

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A bird sits on mounds of garbage, which were abandoned by recycling workers, at Dongxiaokou village in Beijing May 18, 2014.

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Chapter 2. The Life of China’s garbage laborers

“I know that the our working process and our living conditions must be harmful to our environment and our health. But we don’t have time to look into these matters.” -Gu Zhaofang

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While the price and demand of raw materials rose, the recycling industry boomed until the global economic crisis in late 2008. Zhang Yin, one of the richest women in China or in the whole world, made a large part of her fortune buying up waste paper in the United States and shipping it to China to be made into packaging. In late 2008 and early 2009, in the midst of the global economic crisis, the recycling industry in China collapsed as demand for packaging plummeted. Official media reported that four-fifths of China's recycling units closed and millions lost their jobs. Across the scrap trade, prices dropped 50% or more in a matter of months. Each link in the chain is disintegrating, from factories to scrapyards to collectors. The price of raw materials transformed from garbage dropped and many recycled waste dealers could not sell their stock. Many small size recyclers who had borrowed money from relatives to buy a container of scrap were required to throw out their garbage due to declining demand. These effects were felt across China. Even though the business is declining, many recyclers keep doing business because it is difficult for them find alternative jobs.

Gu Zhaofang (37), and her husband have worked in garbage recycling for the last 15 years. Her husband usually goes downtown with his old tricycle to pick up abandoned e-waste and then the couple works together to fix, clean and dismantle the electronic waste, from early morning to night seven days a week. They are a typical example of garbage recycling workers and the interview with Gu gave me better insight into the life of China’s garbage workers. This article is written in first person as it was told to me.

Recycling worker Gu Zhaofang is seen behind a blind as she speaks on her mobile phone at her tenement house at Dongxiaokou village in Beijing May 20, 2014.

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I come from Anhui province, south of China. This province is known as one of poorest provinces in China. My parent was a farmer and my hometown was in a remote area. We didn’t have running water and electricity was available only for few hours a day. I have one sister and two younger brothers but none of us could finish school. We had only one small elementary school near our town but it was two hours’ walking distance. Also we didn’t have a permanent teacher who could teach us. Because it was a very remote area, it was hard to find a teacher who was willing to live in our town. Also I had to take care of my younger brothers while my elderly sister helped out my parents at our small farm.

We were not short of food but our parents could not afford our school tuition or other expenses. One day, one of my relatives came to our village and she said she was working at a factory in Beijing. She said her company was recruiting new workers. At that time, I was 17 years old and my parents decided to send me into Beijing. In Beijing, I worked in a small factory making wedding dresses. Most of the products made in this factory were exported to America and Europe. My salary was around 30-40 USD around 1994. My plan was to save some money from my salary for my wedding and also transfer some money to my family. But my company was a very small company so they didn’t have a dormitory. Also they only provided lunch. So my colleagues and I rented a small room and shared it. So I did not make enough to carry out my plan.

My husband also came from Anhui province and he worked in a construction site next to my factory. Because we came from same province, we were getting along well. When I was 21, I married him. He was helping a friend who was running a small recycling depot at that time. When I got pregnant I was forced to quit my job at the factory, because our factory had a rule that married and pregnant woman cannot work anymore. We lived in a small house

In the beginning, we dealt with plastic bottles and cardboard papers. Every evening, many garbage workers came to our house and sold us the garbage they had collected in a day. We bought the garbage in kilograms. Then we had to sort out the plastic bottles by materials. We had to sort PET from plain plastics and put them into different sacks. Also we had to remove bottle caps and labels from the bottles because they were made of different materials.

Recycling worker Gu Zhaofang speaks on her mobile phone at her tenement house at Dongxiaokou village in Beijing May 20, 2014.

“After paying more than 1,000 yuan (about 160 USD) in rent for our small brick house, we have to remit money to our family in our poor hometown in Hunan and we have to survive on the little remaining money.”

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Once or twice a week, a big truck from a recycling company came to our depot and bought sacks containing the recyclable plastics we had sorted out. I heard that the plastic bottles which I sorted were reproduced as new bottles and fabric for clothes. At that time, the price of one big sack full of plastic bottles, which usually weighed 20-25 kg was 20 USD. If we worked hard, I could make two or three sacks a day. Also my husband and our workers could make three or four sacks a day.

At that time, our income was triple the income that my husband and I had earned in the factory and on the construction site. So we decided to run our own recycling depot. We wouldn’t need machinery but we needed a place where we could work and keep our stock. We borrowed some money from our friends and relatives. With this money, we were able to rent some land. All the businesses in the neighborhood were recycling depots so it was very convenient to find new sellers and buyers. The first couple of years, our business went well. The price of recyclable materials had been rising due to rising demand. But those good days would not last.

At the approach of the Beijing Olympic Games, negative attention was given to our district and we were evicted from the center of Beijing, settling on the east side of Beijing. Our district was demolished to provide space for a large shopping mall. When we moved to the east side of Beijing we had to move all our recyclables which could cost a considerable amount of money. Our business in the new place didn’t go well. In 2007, the price of recyclable materials tumbled because of the global economic crisis.

The price of one big sack of plastic bottles tumbled to 3-5 USD and it was difficult to find buyers. We could not afford our rent so we moved further outside of Beijing. Because plastic bottles had a very low value then, we didn’t need to bring our stocks of plastic bottles and we just set them aside on our property before we left. It was only way we could save money. Later I heard that the land where we had lived (and worked) was transformed into a new luxurious apartment. The developer had buried all of garbage we had left behind under the earth. So the apartment complex was built on top of our garbage. After we moved to our new home, it was difficult to find a job in either a factory or a construction site anymore because we didn’t have recent experience. So we decided to keep engaging in the recycling business. My husband’s friend advised us to recycle electronic wastes. He said it is more valuable than other recyclable waste and the demand is higher. Also it requires only a small space because we don’t need to pile up a mound of garbage. We moved to a village near an airport highway. Most of villagers were recyclers of e-waste in the town. The villagers usually recycled microwaves and fridges. Villagers’ husbands went down the street with their tricycles and picked up or bought abandoned and broken home electronic appliances. Once they brought them home, wives dismantled broken ones and sorted out their parts. Some of them, the men fixed and the women cleaned after they had been repaired. !

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Recycling worker Gu Zhaofang’s husband washes a collected air conditioner for recycling at his tenement house at Dongxiaokou village in Beijing May 20, 2014.

Periodically vendors came to our village and bought them based on the condition of the repaired goods. Because the villagers shared a yard together, the rent was cheaper than our previous places.

“I don’t think we can move up to middle class as long as we run this business. But we can send our children to schools which are better than the ones in our hometown and I believe they will live a better life by getting a better education.”

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As the number of middle class Chinese has increased, the demand for cheap home appliances also has increased. Our business was not bad until 2010. But the landlord asked us to move out when he sold his land to a developer. We heard that the land would be a part of a park and another large-scaled apartment complex would be built there. The landlord gave us a very short notice to move out. We had a very short period of time so we didn’t have a time to prepare. Therefore our villagers decided to protest and we asked the landlord to extend the deadline to move out. Also we asked him to give us compensation money for the cost of our move.

Our protests were futile. The owner said he had already sold this land to another estate developer so it was not his business anymore. We tried to contact the estate developer but we could not locate him. We heard that they are one of biggest estate developers in Beijing. Two or three days earlier, guardsmen wearing black uniforms came to our village with bulldozers. They broke down the outer wall of our village and threatened us saying that they would demolish the entire building on the morning of the deadline, whether or not people were still living there.. Their uniforms had a similar design as police uniforms but they were not policemen; they acted like gangsters.

On the day of the deadline, they came again with bulldozers and started demolishing empty houses. We managed to pack only a few valuable things while they were demolishing our villages. Some of them hammered down our house and intruded into our house. And one guy stole some of our belongings from our cabinet and ran away. There were several policemen watching the demolition from outside of the village but they ignored what was happening inside the town. We asked the police to help us and stop them but they said it was a lawful operation and it is the landlord’s right to ask us to move because the land is private land.

So we moved to my sister’s house which was in another town nearby. Her family also ran an e-waste recycle business. We decide to settle down in the village because we were familiar with the place. My sister and I merged our business together and now we work together. In our town Dongxiakou, about a hundred families of recycle workers reside. In the past, I heard that more than three or four hundred recycle workers’ families reside together ranging from plastic bottle recycler to e-waste recyclers. But now only e-waste recyclers continue running their businesses after the downfall of the recycling business.

Before the summer season begins, we usually recycle air-conditioners. Beijing is a good place to pick up many abandoned and used air-conditioners. Neighboring provinces like Hebei and Laoying are good markets for selling the recycled air-conditioners, because they still need cheaper home appliances.

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Because air-conditioners are seldom abandoned on the street, my husband doesn’t drive up and down the streets as much as he used to. When people want to buy a new air-conditioner, the vendor usually offers to pick up their old ones for free in Beijing. And the vendors sell the old ones to us. Once my husband brings home the abandoned air-conditioners, we check the machine closely and decide whether or not we can fix it. If it looks too used, we cut out the pipes in the back of the air conditioners and release the Freon gas first. Then I wash the plastic covers of the machine with bleach and make it clean. Most air-conditioners are white so it is time-consuming work to make it a clean and shining white color again. So we have to use very strong bleach and keep repeating washing and drying several times. !But if the machine seems to not be in good shape and turns out to be impossible to fix, we just take it apart and sell them as scraps. But selling them as scraps does not bring enough money to us so we have to be careful when we buy abandoned ones. !When we work, my husband and I usually use rubber gloves but we don’t use any other protection. We have heard that the Freon gas might harm our health but we don’t want to spend money to buy protection gear. !Water and drainage is a problem, too. Our village does not have a water supply or a drainage facility. We have to share a common tap and the tap uses underground water. The polluted water which we use to wash electronic wastes runs into a small stream in our village. We don’t have a dumping ground and the city’s garbage disposal truck does not come into our village. So we just throw our garbage into a site at the entrance of our village. The garbage has piled up for many years and it has become a large mound of garbage but we cannot find another place to dispose of our garbage. I know that the our working process and our living conditions must be harmful to our environment and our health. But we don’t have time to look into these matters. !Since we started this business, our life has not improved much. But we cannot quit this job and we don’t want to return to our hometown. We earn around 50 yuan (around 8 USD) by recycling one air-conditioner. Each day, we recycle about two or three air-conditioners. !After paying more than 1,000 yuan (about 160 USD) in rent for our small brick house, we have to remit money to our family in our poor hometown in Hunan and we have to survive on the little remaining money. Anyway, our income and living standard is higher than it would be in our hometown. The biggest reason for staying in Beijing is that it gives our children a better chance for their education. Because of the Hukou system, we cannot send our children to regular schools. Fortunately we have a school for migrant worker’s children near our village so they can attend this school. I don’t think we can move up to middle class as long as we run this business. But we can send our children to schools which are better than the ones in our hometown and I believe they will live a better life by getting a better education.

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Chapter 3. E-waste recycle : Chinese style

A garbage collector rides his tricycle as he looks for recyclable items on the streets of Beijing May 26, 2014.

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A garbage collector takes a nap on his tricycle, as he waits for people to sell abandoned items to him, in downtown Beijing May 26, 2014.

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Garbage collectors load collected items into their cars to sell them to garbage recyclers in Beijing June 4, 2014.

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Garbage recycler dismantle an abandoned water dispenser at a recoiling depot in Beijing May 8, 2014.

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Garbage recycler dismantle an abandoned water dispenser at a recoiling depot in Beijing May 19, 2014.

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Chapter 4. Life in Beijing’s E-waste villages After a 40-minute car ride to northern Beijing, I arrived in Dongxiaokou village, the capital’s biggest site for the disposal and recycling of electronic waste such as abandoned air-conditioners, fridges and TV sets. This village has been the home of e-waste collectors and recyclers for a decade and is one of the few waste villages on the outskirts of Beijing. !In the village, several hundred families live alongside various types of electronic waste, which they collect from people in wealthy, downtown Beijing. No one knows the exact population of e-waste collectors in the village because most of them are migrant workers who don’t have hukous, China’s household registration permits, or licenses for their recycling business. !As summer approaches, the yards of the recyclers’ old and small tenement houses are filled with stacks of abandoned air-conditioners. The recyclers take apart the tainted and broken air-conditioners and transform the functioning air-conditioners. They are then handed over to wholesale dealers who usually sell these recycled machines to new owners in other rural provinces. But e-waste that cannot be recycled has a different destination. They are sold as scrap that go for 1 RMB (1.5 USD) per 1kg after they are dismantled by the recycler’s hammer and axe. !The amount of electronic waste has risen along with the growth in the Chinese economy. China has already become the world’s second largest producer of electronic waste, producing 2.3 million tons in 2011, according to a report from China International Environmental Protection Exhibition & Conference 2013. !But the villagers have not been direct beneficiaries of this boom. I interviewed Gu Zhaofang, a villager who was dismantling broken air-conditioners. For the past 10 years, her husband collected abandoned electronics in downtown Beijing and the couple would work together to fix, clean and dismantle the electronic waste, from early morning to night seven days a week. They earn around 50 yuan (around 8 USD) by recycling one air-conditioner. Each day, they recycle about two or three air-conditioners. !After paying more than 1,000 yuan (about 160 USD) for rent for their small brick house, they have to remit money to their family in their poor hometown in Hunan and are forced to survive on the little remaining money. !

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Recycling electronic waste also poses serious danger to the villagers’ health and the environment. The village lacks infrastructure such as sewage and tap water. Sanitation facilities are almost non-existent. !Pollutants released from the recycling and disposal process have turned the water a strange colour. Mounds of abandoned garbage which cannot be recycled surrounds the village. Children play on piles of waste and the small stream in the village is polluted with a rancid smell. !According to the World Health Organization, direct contact with harmful materials from e-waste such as lead, cadmium and chromium can affect human health. Recycling activities such as dismantling electrical equipment may also result in an increased risk of injury. !

But this is not something that bothers the villagers who just want to get by. Poorer garbage collectors, who cannot even afford their own recycling business, hunt for leftovers from the recyclers. With their bare hands, they dig up the polluted soil to find some pieces of scrap metals left behind. !Health and environmental costs of recycling are the furthest thing from the villagers’ minds. The village is now facing demolition due to Beijing’s ambitious urbanization plan. Villagers are worried about losing their homes and work. They say they don’t know where to go in the future with their waste –once trash but now their treasure.

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Chapter 5.

The future of China’s urban mining business

For years, China has welcomed the world’s garbage and created surging businesses in recycling. Now authorities are turning down the rich West’s waste disposals and, as they have, headaches are growing in the West from the surging output of domestic garbage. Since February 2013, the Chinese government launched the “Green Fence” campaign which enforces regulations on importing dirty scrap materials into the country and is an effort by China to strengthen environmental standards. It prohibits the import of unwashed post-consumer plastics and other "contaminated" waste shipments. The campaign has set a limit of 1.5 percent of allowable contaminant for each bale of imported recyclables (including materials such as metal, plastics, textiles, rubber and recovered paper).

China has been a major recycling processing center for the world and is abruptly changing their global recycling industry. But it is an inevitable choice for China. Breaking down discarded appliances to recover copper and other metals, using crude smelters and burning leftover plastic and other materials in household workshops with a lack of sanitation facilities cannot continue as they have without a huge cost to the population and environment. Green Fence is in line with the ruling Communist Party's pledges to make the economy cleaner and more efficient. China's recycling industry has boomed over the past 20 years. But environmentalists have long complained that the industry is poisoning China's air, water and soil. Therefore the Chinese government now wants to comply with increased public awareness and concern over pollution.

The waste recycling system which has heavily relied on cheap manual labor needs to be updated to reduce pollution. In 2011, recycled scrap supplied some 21 percent of the nearly 100 million tons of paper used by Chinese industry, according to the state-run newspaper China Daily. It said that resulted in a savings of 18.7 million tons of wood. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rigid reform drive will tighten the loose control of government’s management of the garbage industry. By law, China allows waste shipments to contain no more than 1 percent of unrelated material. But it has seldom abided by this law due to corrupt custom officials. According to a statement from Shanghai Customs Bureau published in April 2013, some shipments were found to be up to 40 percent unrecyclable trash and smuggling by unlicensed garbage traders of medical and other waste inside shipments in order to maximize their profits; it has become a direct threat to everyone’s health.

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The rising cost of labor is another challenge for China’s recycling business. Due to labor shortages, an aging population and government regulations, there has been a substantial rise in China’s labor costs. As urbanization of rural areas has given the local population more chances to seek for work opportunities in their vicinity, it has also prevented migration to urban areas resulting in fewer workers and more expensive labor.

The second generation of migrant workers has received more education than their parent generation. They prefer to go to college instead of working in factories due to their awareness of the benefits of better education. These factors are further adding to the labor shortage. Over the past decade, business owners have seen blue-collar pay increase five- to nine-fold. The Chinese Government’s regulations require minimum wages to be raised every two years. Back in 2001, the minimum wage in China was about 58 cents per hour and has increased by almost 20% annually for a decade.

Due to expansion of the urban area by the Chinese government’s strong drive for urbanization, many recycling depots which had been located closer to the source of garbage (often right in the urban area), have been driven away to rural areas.

It also raises the costs of logistics for recycle workers and has led to recent shutdowns of recycle businesses.

As the cost of labor in China increases along with growing concern about environmental issues, China’s garbage industry will be scaled back and another developing country will take China’s role in the recycling industry in the future.

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Living with e-waste

China’s e-waste recyclers !and their life !

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Photo/Text by Kim Kyung-Hoon!!