China Limits Waste. ‘Cardboard Grannies’ and Texas Recyclers Scramble.
- 6 years ago
China Limits Waste. ‘Cardboard Grannies’ and Texas Recyclers Scramble.
“I was angry, but I knew I was just a small businesswoman,” Ms. Leung, 63, said of the wastepaper restrictions as she picked through cardboard, polystyrene
and soda cans in a rat-infested alley in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong on a recent morning.
As with so much else in the global economy, China’s decision is rippling through a vast supply chain
that stretches from big waste companies in Texas to the “cardboard grannies” in Hong Kong like Ms. Leung that pick through mounds of paper and plastic.
Fears of widespread domestic pollution were amplified by “Plastic China,” a recent documentary film about a bleak town in the eastern province of Shandong where people earn their living by picking through scrap plastics
and processing them in machines that belch black smoke.
“I began skipping dinner so I could work harder,” said Ms. Leung, who was already moonlighting
as a dishwasher, sleeping fewer than five hours a night and making as little as $500 a month.
HONG KONG — When the street value of scrap cardboard here fell by nearly a third this summer, Leung Siu-Guen, a scrap collector, started to worry.
“I was angry, but I knew I was just a small businesswoman,” Ms. Leung, 63, said of the wastepaper restrictions as she picked through cardboard, polystyrene
and soda cans in a rat-infested alley in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong on a recent morning.
As with so much else in the global economy, China’s decision is rippling through a vast supply chain
that stretches from big waste companies in Texas to the “cardboard grannies” in Hong Kong like Ms. Leung that pick through mounds of paper and plastic.
Fears of widespread domestic pollution were amplified by “Plastic China,” a recent documentary film about a bleak town in the eastern province of Shandong where people earn their living by picking through scrap plastics
and processing them in machines that belch black smoke.
“I began skipping dinner so I could work harder,” said Ms. Leung, who was already moonlighting
as a dishwasher, sleeping fewer than five hours a night and making as little as $500 a month.
HONG KONG — When the street value of scrap cardboard here fell by nearly a third this summer, Leung Siu-Guen, a scrap collector, started to worry.