#fulbrightresearch

Last week, I had purchased another 2nd hand bike after my first one pretty much just decomposed via rust in front of my eyes. I wanted to salvage some of the parts from Bike 1 to Bike 2 though so had run around the streets looking for a wrench. The recyclers (from under that awning) watched me and I decided to try another tactic. I offered them the bike and after a series of back and forth, had their attention and (possibly) respect since I don’t think they see that many girls asking around for wrenches.

I had a chance to sit down with some of them a few days later, all who insisted to me their names were DA BO. I ended up speaking to mostly DA BO #1.

Another research mistake – I opened my bag up and my Macbook was clearly displayed. DA BO #1 immediately jumped on this -

DA BO: “I want your laptop. “

Me: “To sell?”

DA BO: “Not to sell, and not for myself, but for my kids to play with”

And thus is how we began our half interview half shooting the shit.

DA BO is from Henan, a small city that I couldn’t quite catch the name of due to his heavier dialect accent. When asked how long he’s been here he shouts (well really says… his speaking voice was pretty much at shout decibel the entire time) that he arrived here around 10 days ago. That didn’t make sense to me… I’m pretty sure I’ve seen DA BO going up and down the streets for a couple of months now. Apparently he and his 老乡 (someone from your hometown) did indeed return to Hangzhou 10 days ago after going back to Henan to plant crops. He returns home every 3 months or so to cultivate his farm.

Mentions of countryside bring me back to my days in Hongcun

At home, he has a family of four, he, his wife, and his two girls. I ask him how old his kids are. “I have no idea… in their 20s”, he answers. He chortles “ in China, it’s not like in the states, we don’t have celebrations for people’s birthdays. It just happens”. He’s 48 but would look so much younger if it wasn’t his skin that had the exact imager of “leathery skin”. We go back and forth about age in which I tell him there’s no way that he’s that old and he guesses I’m 17 at most. Well then. When I asked him if he wished he had a boy, to my surprise he answered that two girls are better, you wouldn’t have to pay as much (in Chinese tradition it’s customary for the boy to have to buy a house/car/land before he gets married, up to 500,000 RMB he says!)

His older daughter’s already married. “Those with no schooling, we have to marry early” he offers up, without me having so much as bat an eye. It always astounds me how much Chinese people know about America. Do we know that much about day –to-day Chinese life? “It’s not like in your country, you wouldn’t understand this need”. DA BO himself has only a second grade education and considers himself illiterate. He jokes that he can’t understand the English I’m scribbling in my notebook… but wouldn’t be able to read the Chinese either.  He hasn’t had an opportunity to learn, but insisted that he wouldn’t want to learn anyways at this point “I’m too old, just too old. I’ve already been like this for so long” .

Why did he start doing this type of work?

The independent schedule he could operate by was DA BO’s first reason. Also… he needed to survive. He had tried to find another job when first coming to Hanghzou – he looked everywhere, but no one wanted someone that couldn’t read. He ended up in my small community because he got used to it – “I don’t have friends here” he insists when I offer that maybe he stayed because of other people. The people he knows in Henan in his small village are twice in number of that in Hangzhou, despite how big Hangzhou is. He started doing this type of work 4-5 years ago, but continuously maintained “it makes me no money”.

At one point, he made some crack about how the heavens are protecting this bitter life. However, throughout all these instances of his extreme, he kept an unwavering smile on.

There’s too many recyclers in Hangzhou he insists. When asked if he’s afraid of the competition, he, still smiling, shouts/says “VERY”.  He lives somewhere 30 km to the west, an area maybe called “TangHe”. Regardless, it’s far.

What does he collect?

Paper (which takes up most of his haul), Iron, Plastic, no glass bottles. His daily haul can range from nothing to 1,000 斤 and his profit ranges between 30 and 40 块 on average. A three-wheeled cart, the most essentially and pretty much only equipment needed, costs around 100 RMB. He buys paper for around .3/half kilo and sells for around .4/half kilo.

At one point they start joking about prices for things… including for me. “You’ll definitely go for at least 10 kuai/half kilo”. Me? As valuable as copper? They shouldn’t have. I insist that I haven’t weighed myself in awhile so couldn’t give them a final price. A few minutes later, a scale suddenly appears. Yet again, I find myself using my weight as leverage (pun intended) for my interviews.

Oh Hello again

The prices are based on the distribution centers he sells to, which apparently are located all throughout Hangzhou, even on the block over from me. However, the ones in the actual city of Hangzhou offer a much lower price than the ones on the outskirts of town so he makes the drive to the outskirts of town.

He doesn’t buy from sanitation workers (those in orange) because they apparently sell at a higher price than just people from the neighborhood. Thinking about Big Sister Chang’s story, who seems to have much cooperation with the sanitation workers in her small community, how people organize will always differ, sometimes greatly. He also doesn’t cooperate with businesses to directly take any of their trash because it’ll constrict his freedom. He does have to go back to his farm every few months.

The police don’t bother him, they used to be harsher with their treatment of the recyclers but recently have loosened up. When I ask why they don’t bother him, he just answers “Why should they bother us, we’re just like beggars… but instead of money we just want food”.

He hasn’t heard of the 物尽其用 or 9 BEIKE platforms, and after I explain it to them, he says he’s not worried, they go after a different demographic than he does.

While this is going on, the other recycler who had left and came back with a load from someone’s house is testing to see what metal type a small rocket alike machine is using a magnet that sticks to his cart. No need for some fancy chemical test to see metal breakdown, the magnet here is just fine. The magnet doesn’t stick. I start watching the recycler with the magnet take apart his small rocket machine and all the recyclers snicker at my weird curiosity.

Rocket ship maybe time machine thing, the compressed metal piece on the left is the aluminum shell that Magnet Man had just taken off

“The outside is aluminum” another recycler says. “the inside has copper”

She’s been working at this transfer point for the past 3 years but in the recycling industry since 2000. She lives in Yuhang (a suburb of Hangzhou). She specifically deals with paper materials (i.e. cardboard boxes, books, newspapers, etc), but the facility which we were at also had other workers processing iron, copper, plastic, and I saw some rubber tires out in the back.  She estimates that she’s receiving around 20 tonnes of materials a day. Individual customers coming on a daily basis? “I have no idea”, she playfully shrieks at me, … but maybe around 100 a day?”

Incoming hauls are either weighed on a medium sized scale or a large scale that apparently IS the entryway to the facility. Going out of order from what you learn in Freshman year Chem, container + material are weighed, materials are thrown into a pile, and container is weighed alone. No tare of scale needed, just simple math. In terms of how much she can make a year? It just depends on the market and some luck. From this description, 张仪 pretty much is an investment banker.

Old Fashioned Math

I had the chance to weigh myself on her scales during a lull in business. Let’s just say I forgot to write down that data point.

Units in half kilos. Object on scale is not me

She’s worked with both物尽其用, 9BEIKE, 虎哥(another APP) and really doesn’t seem to lean either way. 9 BEIKE, she notes, touches their goods through excellent door-to-door customer service, and brings her the haul. In terms of 物尽其用, she notes that they don’t touch any of the goods they’re moving; she actually pays 物尽其用 to gather the recyclables from individual recyclers. How does she decide what can sell and what can’t? Most of the things coming her way can be sold.

Mt. Cardboard

Newspaper Bunkers

Most of the individual recyclers coming to her are farmers that don’t have another income option. This industry gives them some sort of freedom in terms of working. However, there have been less customers since all the prices fell recently. As I’ve been hearing this EVERYWHERE I’ve gone, I had to ask “did anything NOT fall in price?”

Talking Prices

Iron apparently went up a bit – I know where my next investment is going.

In the valley of a large book mountain, there was a couple who had been watching me for the past hour as they diligently ripped the covers off of all the books surrounding them, taking from the never ending stack. Xiao Jiang and Xiao Xiang are from Guizhou, one of the poorer provinces in China that is a respectable distance from Hangzhou, and have been in Hangzhou for around 13 years. They have 6 people in their family, the two of them, their 3 kids, and the grandmother who takes care of the kids in Guizhou. “Don’t forget about grandmather!” Xiao Jiang had interjected when I asked if they were all together a happy family of 5. Their job is to help 张仪 with whatever work needs to be done, which at this moment and for the next few hours was to separate the book covers from all paper backs since the thicker paper sold for more.

Xiao Jiang and Xiao Xiang in the valley of the shadow of the cardboard

张仪 left around 3 times during my site visit (coming out of her office suddenly with a dress and lipstick on before her first departure) to take care of outside business. I really didn’t mind though as this gave me an opportunity to sit by the (extremely polluted) river, a small relief from the heavy odor and eyeballs-are-now-filled-with-tiny-specks-and-kinda-hurt dustiness of the processing plant. I also had the chance to talk to 张仪’s sister, who worked for around 10 years in the recycling industry but has changed industries to open her own eastern medicine store that offers something called 火治 – Fire Healing. And yes. I have around 5 minute of videos on my phone of people being burned under blankets for the purpose of rejuvenation. She apparently does it once a week and had pretty great skin so I don’t want to jump to any conclusions yet…..

Another part of the processing that takes place in this center that I forgot to mention earlier was also carried out by Xiao Jiang. Recycling companies discount 1.5 kilos for every 50 kilos of goods they receive. Thus, 张仪 has Xiao Jiang “water” part of the paper mountain. 张仪 had smiled a little shyly about this practice. Her sister, on the other hand, when asked about this practice, was very blunt and straightforward “The factories will take advantage of you if you don’t water first; they already have their process in place”.

In case you ever wondered where temporary street dividers end up in China....

Taking a break from compressing plastic traffic mediums

During 张仪 second trip out of the facility, I watched a 15 foot tractor U turn out of a 10 foot or so street on a sparse patch of green grass next to a sun-drying blanket. After the tractor nimbly freed itself, I looked down at my phone and realized it was completely covered in dust. The blanket innocently hung next to me, and I did not want to think about how much of the down filling was probably just tractor dust. Simultaneously, the sheen of dust that must have permeated everyone’s lungs by now was no laughing matter.

Innocuous-looking blanket flowing in the wind (of a car's exhaust)

A block as such weighs more than 1 tonne!!!

I was introduced to her through a friend (黄毅) of a friend (Lily) who owns a recycler cooperative platform, 物尽其用. They knew I wanted to talk to recyclers and agreed to introduce me to some. One of the  物尽其用 workers drove me on his moped to a small community, one that even had its own park and exercise court in the middle! A merry and robust lady pedaling a three-wheeled cart came into view, and I didn’t have to ask, I knew this was Big Sister Chang (to be known as常大姐 from here forth).

常大姐 is not only the first official interviewee I have but also the first female recycler I’ve seen on the streets of China with a three-wheeled cart. I have seen numerous street cleaners (official ones, orange vests to prove it) that are females but except for my midnight snack BBQ lady, very few females are seen driving around these three-wheeled carts.

Stealthy Sanitation Workers at Night

常大姐is 48 years old from Anhui, but talking to her I feel like I’m talking to someone in their 30s. Her face is constantly glowing and she’s constantly laughing to herself and (most likely forcing) herself to laugh at my jokes. She clearly has a very good reputation in this little community. Throughout our first 20 minutes of conversation, she kept looking over my shoulder and around, and I was afraid I was completely losing her attention/boring the eye contact ability out of her. However, she was just trying to make her living, the whole time she was trying to make eye contact with one of the official sanitation workers in orange who had a stash of cardboard boxes waiting for her (and also was confused what I was doing).  Someone else stopped and asked her for plastic bottles. She talked to the other recycler on his bike (He’s missing an arm so people feel bad for him and give him more business, she tells me in something I don’t think was meant to be a whisper). 常大姐 doesn’t mind though that the other recycler gets more of the valuable wares though; she’s pretty content where she is; I watch her toss a pile of cardboard onto a small patch of grass, there’s already 5 other large piles at least weighing 5 kilos each waiting for her.

常大姐 collects plastic, aluminum, copper, and clothes, TV, paper (cardboard boxes, newspapers), but not glass, glass doesn’t make money, despite being apparently one of the more “recyclable” materials in the world. Other things that could make money, we would not usually think of…. An example is常大姐 waving her hand towards the direction of metal bars on an apartment as she was describing what could be recycled.

Some of the goods in 常大姐's cart

Because of the 物尽其用 platform, she makes more profit, has more customers than she did before. Her husband also works in this recycling industry while doing an assortment of odd jobs: installing things, moving people out of their house, etc.

She has a 2nd grade education and before coming to Hangzhou 15 years ago, she was a wheat and rice farmer in Anhui, subsistence farmer to be exact. Everyone around her was leaving to work in the city; so she and her did too. These past few years, they’ve been making enough to at least save a little bit of money after their expenses.

常大姐 lives with her 2 boys and husband in a small apartment. Her boys are both in their 20s and already working. Her younger son is 23. … we think. We tried to go the chinese way of counting years.

Then I realized how old I was , but常大姐 comforted me, saying I still looked like a “nice, young single girl”

She makes a minimum of 30 RMB a day to maximum 500 RMB a day. All the money that her 2 sons and her husband she doesn’t bother with. She buys all the food for the household (her 2 sons work) and cooks all the food, does all the laundry, etc. She says that all the farmer families are like this.. in which I joked that I should probably get a city husband. She heartedly agrees, citing that city men do everything that she just mentioned and city women just sit around, drinking tea and play Mahjong all day. Retirement fund is around 2-3 thousand RMB, 4-5 thousand RMB depending on your past employment. Unfortunately, her husband didn’t pick up on this habit when they moved to the city because, she explicitly says, they lived among other people from their village in their apartment community. Interestingly enough, this is the American immigration story I knew so well growing up being repeated by a Chinese recycler sitting on a 3 wheeled cart.

In her hometown in Anhui, they have a 3 story house that is fully equipped. In terms of material things, the quality of life in Hangzhou is not that great

She learned how to use a smartphone to be on this platform. 物尽其用 usually requires a 400 RMB deposit for cellphones. 常大姐 flashes a smile at me and hesitates… “some people pay and some people don’t…. don’t say anything ok?” and breaks into a fit of giggles.

When asked about how she feels concerning recyclers getting abused. She thinks momentarily and shakes her head. “After all, everyone knows each other”. However, no one she knows actually has work certification to be doing this recycling.  In the past, there were security guards in the front of the small community that wouldn’t let her in without paying a fee. Recently though, in the past 5 to 6 years, no one cares, they flow in and out as they please.

Occasionally, recyclers get caught on the main road with their 3 wheeled carts. The 3 wheel carts need permits but in the community, no one cares either. In the past 10-20 years, her 3 wheel cart got taken away many times… in one year her cart could get “impounded” like 3 to 4 times. Recently, she’s been caught less with the cart.

That Smile though

Overall, their actions generate positive environmental externalities.

Lowering quantities of waste requiting disposal

Conserving resources

Lowering the CO2 contribution of Waste Management system

Supplying value chains with locally available materials

Service Chain - public service of urban cleansing, street sweeping, space management, collection, transport and disposal

Value Chain – handling recyclables, process in which things are valorized as animal feed, basically how the service chain is monetized

Theoretical, conceptual relationship between the two chains

The following are examples of how the service and value chain may interact in real life~ 

The Classic Value Chain is found in many low-income countries. The basic gist is that members of the service chain (informal and formal private sector) collect materials and commercialize them in the value chain. The movement from the service chain to the value chain is often done by sanitation workers themselves. Only movement directly from households and businesses to the value chains is through private, unauthorized, informal recyclers’ activities, selling to the value chain

Classic Value Chain Diagram

The Classic Municipal Recycling model is motivated by a “push” to avoid disposal in whatever way possible and is not profitable. Service chain activity is motivated solely by a desire for environmental protection and the operations are funded by municipal service chain institutions despite the fact that recycling depends on the demands of the value chain. This ensures constant collection of recyclables by the service chain despite changes in pricing or status of the value chain.

This framework was a result of high disposal costs in landfilling. Market prices from classical municipal recycling covers approximately only 40% of costs to organize, separate collection, and other operations in municipal recycling.

To ensure the existence of this set-up, the household’s behavioral changes, heightened communication systems, and household storage technology are important factors.

The value chain’s sphere of influence is greatly reduced

Waste pickers and value chain have little if any relationships. In fact, waste pickers may have been absorbed into service chain.

Your Coke all accounted for

In the structure of exclusive NGO recycling, NGO stakeholders recycle without fully understanding context and this many times, causes more harm than good. They conflict with rather than co-operate with the informal sector and may directly compete with marginalized communities for materials, further threatening the earning potential of the informal waste picker. A key word to note here is exclusive vs inclusive. Inclusive recycling could include work in transferring people from the informal to formal sector. 

What are reasons not to integrate the informal recyclers within a formal framework?

When high technology landfills have been built that the local and national authorities are confronted with informal recycler problem and their potential to DISRUPT landfill operations

Revenues flow directly from materials into municipal coffers

Service Chain Integration attempts by the World Bank and the inter-American development bank (IDB): The IDB has published a guide with procedures for recipients of investment loans in waste sector to integrate informal recyclers into service chain (landfill or Materials Recovery Facility ~MRF~ jobs from dump pickers or street pickers become collection crew or subcontractors) or compensate them for income losses because there’s not enough salaried work

Integration from the Value Chain side

Raise value of certain types of materials

Examples can include forming co-ops to pool materials for sale, organizing collective storage/transport, providing working capital, shortening time between delivery and payment for sales of materials

How can this be achieved? price support, targeted market development, “start-up subsidies for artisanal recycling", infrastructure and transport improvement

How to Integrate? What are different models?

Welfare Based (social integration)

Focus: improving socio-economic status of individuals and families

Motivation: WP are poor without agency

Rights-based/labor organizing (also social integration): Focus: support WP and families to claim rights (labour, citizenship, identity cards, formal papers etc), occupational recognition

Technical Integration (2-sided adaptation)

Focus: create contracts between service chain and informal recyclers, reduce harassment of WP by police and authorities

Formal registration of recycling businesses, payment of taxes, and compliance with zoning and traffic laws -> legalize business relationships

Formalization (1-sided compliance)

Zoning, legal rules, tax law compliance and business norms by WP, informal recyclers, small junk shops

Legalizes things such as trans-boundary movement of e-waste

WAITING FOR FORMAL SYSTEM TO OPEN – create space for informal participants

B2B Interventions and Value Chain Strengthening

Concentrate on economic development/job creation

Micro-financing and storage for materials access

Work WITHIN value chains to improve stability

NGO Recycling Projects

Prioritize job creation/socio-economic of SMALL number of informal waste workers

Often have access to more capital for infrastructure

Often work in a localized setting

Intervention Types

Organizing Informal Recyclers

Labor union organizing provides models for organizing informal recyclers as workers/providing social protection and professional recognition

Occupational recognition interventions

Formalization

One-sided adaptation of the informal sector into formal employment

Idea is that the formal waste system wins overall, not just the informal WP

Key: inclusive waste management > traditional private sector participation/privatization

This company is everything I aspire to create in the future. As the founder Yi Huang told me, they focus more on giving back to the community than making money, though they still need to survive as an enterprise. What really got me though was when Yi Huang said that they fully believe that people should reduce their garbage generation and hope that this will happen soon. Garbage is 物尽其用’s commodity essentially though?! They want to disrupt the industry, through... serving the public interest???? Read on to find out how this will all work!

Welcome page to 物尽其用s platform on WeChat

Trying to call a recycler, find me in China, I dare you

The first I noticed when conversing with the Sales Director was that the street recyclers were refered to as “师傅s” which is a term used to denote respect in China towards a blue collared laborer, similar to saying “Sir”. I usually use it when talking to my cab drivers or someone that is a service professional. I was struck though that this term was used to describe the recyclers in 3rd person. In my lab or in my professor’s office we explicitly use the term 收废品者, literally one who collects waste.

The Sales Director elaborated when I explained to her my shock. 物尽其用 sees their customer base as the 师傅s, not those getting rid of their trash. This further shocked me, but also just highlights how serious this company was about furthering public interest, going so far as to say they serve those that are usually seen as the bottom level of society. Their platform works with organizing the later part of the recycling supply chain, getting the garbage from the 师傅s hands to the MRF and saves the 师傅s a lot of time and pain of having to ride around looking for recyclables to buy. I hate to say this, but the best way to describe them is the UBER of plastic bottles but the 师傅s are even more so free agents. At times, they offer collection trucks to bring materials to the factories or the middle distribution centers.

Why did you pick SHIFUs?

1） They understand the neighbord and those that live there

2） They additionally understand the recycling system, where they should sell, what they should buy, and can appraise the items independent of 物尽其用

According to the Sales Director, the 师傅s in this area haven’t received much harassment, contrary to many reports I have read. This being that Hangzhou is generaly a “better” town and also that the 师傅s are many times integrated in the communities they work in.  The 师傅s are generaly between 40 and 50, from out of town and the gender break down is somewhere like 90% males 10% female. In terms of being fined, the government generaly has a  “open an eye, close an eye”（睁一眼，闭一眼）mentality regarding the师傅s. Typically, they don’t have work licenses OR permits to drive their 3-wheeled carts so fines can be pretty hefty if they are hit with them.  A very, very rough estimates puts a师傅 making around 10 RMB for each order placed and to have around 10 – 15 orders a day. However, this is a very general approximate since a TV being tossed could change that entirely or someone moving houses and getting rid of all their things would completely throw off that average.  

Recently, there’s been a drop in FULL time 师傅s due to :

Competition

Leaving Hangzhou and going back to their original cities

Cardboard box not as worth it as newspaper and newspaper declining in value (generaly materials declining in value)

More factories and MRFs in other places that are not Hangzhou

Part-time workers might have other blue-collared work or are security guards (being a security guard makes collecting recyclables very easy since you already have access to a neighborhood and have space where you can store things).

How does 物尽其用 make money?

Commission is taken out throughout the process. The 师傅s get the market price though.He encourages the end factories to also participate in this process. They also rely heavily on marginal costs being low and being able to sell a large amount.

Who is in charge of 废品:

流通商务 is in charge

共性 部门(Public Department) from start to finish

The beginning of the process住建部门 is in charge

sanitation group:环卫部门 is in charge of 垃圾 transport 收运, 处置 disposal

Environmental Department is also in charge of disposal and hazardous trash disposal

城建部门 Urban Construction Department：天子岭填埋 The Tianziling Land: 只负责收运与处置一部分：填埋，一个焚烧

According to a report by the China Resource Recycling Association, there were 1,600 万 people in the recycling industry throughout China as of 2016. That’s a pretty sharp drop from the 1860 万 reports in the industry from a 2015 figure. In terms of how many 师傅s there are in Hangzhou – it depends on how you count the population, do the suburbs count? He would guess there are 500 to 600 three-wheel cart 师傅s. in the downtown Hangzhou area But besides these师傅s, there are those that work at collection centers so it’s hard to estimate without a fixed scope definition.

The public interest portion of 物尽其用’s businesss model becomes clearer and clearer as I talk to Huang Yi. At one point, 物尽其用 even collected clothes and gave them to the师傅s during the cold winter months (I can vouch for this, Hangzhou is a bitter place during the winter months).

So going back to the idea of wasting less, what’s going to happen to a company like 物尽其用 when there’s less waste for them to trade?!

It’s all a process, Huang Yi believes, we’re walking towards how other countries deal with their trash. We need to start PAYING money to deal with our trash. Besides the three-wheeled cart driving 师傅s, there are also actual 拾荒者／保卫 /保境 (trash-pickers／sanitation workers／official cleaners). By changing their target audience from the three-wheeled cart driving 师傅s to the aforementioned workers (that tend to be made up of official government workers), the cost for collecting recyclables can be even lower since a middle man is again cut out.

For example, a 师傅, originally is going to buy a book for .1 , he needs to spend that .1 to get the book. He then in turn sells it for .2 to 物尽其用 or wherever. 物尽其用 needs to pay .2, the 师傅 gets .1. However, if a 保境 gets it off the street for free, sells it for .1 to 物尽其用, they get the .1 along with their official salaries. Their costs are much lower, and they have to sell instantly since they don’t have storehouses.

The government has been trying to take care of this problem but one of the biggest pain points has not been resolved well: SOURCE SEPARATION. It’s pretty terrible. Foreign countries are still exporting their garbage and (especially) recyclables for the Chinese to take care of due to the, still, relatively low disposal costs. There has been laws recently to combat this, but many companies are getting around this by having their trash/waste go through South East Asian countries as a middle point. Despite China’s attempt as photographing and ticketing, trash is still coming in. Though coming in through South East Asian countries, there has been some processing so generally this waste will be less wet (aka less food waste).

What does Huang Yi think is the biggest hurdle to source-separation? Hangzhou does do it better than other places, but there is no good supervision and more importantly, no DRIVING FORCE. The mentality of “no one is watching me, why should I separate?”

Pick your garbage, any garbage

Wait for your recycling collector to appear at your door, mine was a young, strapping guy in his 20s. Get “shells” for all the recyclables you hand over.

Trade in “shells” for things! A couple friends of mine trade in all their shells for grocery gift cards that they donate to kids in less privileged situations.  

The world awaits

Pretty easy right? I thought so too so wanted to learn more about 9 BEIKE and also recycling APPs in general. China’s extremely sophisticated APP economy coupled with the lack of a formal recycling infrastructure paved the way for many of these companies to be established in recent years.

Also seeing one of these suddenly show up in my apartment....

On a lovely April day, I sat down with Li Ah, one of the founding members of 9贝壳. It was started in 2014 from the depth of the Alibaba APP department. Its purpose is to be an enterprise, not be an environmental group, but it recognized the positive effects it has on the environment.

Li Ah is a young guy from Xinjiang, who’s been in the start-up crowd since he graduated Zhejiang University and clearly very much on his toes. When I asked about the competitors in this recycling APP field (name dropping a few without blinking an eye too I may say), Li Ah smiled and said he himself actually separates the start up enterprises entering the recycling field into 3 types. So yes, there’s enough start up enterprises to do with recycling that they can actually be categorized.

Internet Start Up: Offline 2 Offline (From the Top Down) – Companies started online and move into the real world The characteristics of this type of O2O start up is that they tend to be attentive to their customers and have excellent customer service. Obviously there are many levels of services provided and levels of how these services are rendered.  9 BEIKE is this type of start-up

Type 2: From Bottom Up, basically companies that were originally disposal companies but then moved onto the interwebs.These types of companies have the ability to dispose of and process the recyclables that they collect. The prices they offer for recyclables are generally comparatively lower than Type 1. They also tend to not go through all the possible recycling solutions and will incinerate if needed.

Type 3, These are start ups that the government wants to work with and connect with. These tend to have the fastest growth in terms of user base. However, their efficacy won’t be that high. They receive government subsidies and work under government policies.

Specific competition that he mentioned was虎哥圆收 (translated to Tiger Brother Mate Collection) and 爱回收 (Love to Recycle), that only recycles electronic products. Out of these that he mentioned, Li Ah believes that 9 BEIKE has the biggest scope, collecting pretty much everything (books, newspapers, clothing, bottles, mattresses, computer monitors, etc)

In terms of a general background in recycling, Li Ah also had his own thoughts and viewpoints. MRF in china probably have ~40% of their revenues coming from government funds. China does also depend on foreign companies coming in to invest in their waste management infrastructure, however, many of these foreign investors won’t leave the Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, with the largest landfill in Asia (Laogang in Shanghai) being owned by Veolia, a waste management company headquartered in France.

How can China get its recycling collection to become like that of western countries?

Li Ah believes that right now it can’t be the government running the show, trying to transfer power from individual hands into a centralized system. Instead, it must be enterprises with more expertise; a collection of individuals wouldn’t work either.

Thinking of the strapping young gentleman picking up my plastic bottles, why didn’t they use the already existing infrastructure of the street-recyclers?

回收哥 in Wuhan use the existing infrastructure of the street-recyclers － their app has a similar business model to 9 BEIKE except that they bring together and utilize the power street-side recyclers.

Li Ah believes the street-side reyclers are too old and from another period in which they wouldn’t be able to use the APP, don’t have “culture”, and don’t understand the theory and practices of environmentalism. Additionally, 9 BEIKE is able to give excellent service and they are able to train their workers more conveniently. However, he doesn’t completely reject this notion for the future.

What entities have they cooperated with?

They've previously cooperated with the government in handing out recycling bins but this ended with most of the bins being used as plain garbage bins.9 BEIKE has also partnered with LianHua Supermarket in Hangzhou to target consumers and show off their APP's functions, IKEA to work with their employee base, and various cellphone companies for cellphone trade-ins.

Li Ah was super helpful and patient in helping me understand 9 BEIKE albeit very confused as to why I was so interested in the various aspects of their business (I like asking questions and nonsequitors, what can I say?). My last question to him was "Do you use 9 BEIKE yourself?). No, he answered, the frequency of which he would need it is too low.

China’s sudden economic growth as a relatively resource-poor nation left a huge gaping hole in how China was going to meet the demand as the world’s factory.  Owners were left not only with the question of how they will grow their businesses, but really have any fuel to build their business with. Aka, they’re pretty desperate. For example, in 2012, China produced 5.6 million tons of copper, of which 2.75 million tons were produced with scrap copper. Approximately 825 thousand tons of this was domestically collected. From what though? Old appliances, phone wiring, maybe some Christmas lights from a Costa Coffee’s holiday décor etc .

To recycle, people usually call up their neighborhood recycler with a three-wheeled cart (which can be done now by phone, in person, or through a plethora of APPs!), sell whatever old wares or recyclable garbage they have to their informal recycling squad.

Sanitation Worker in Beijing

These grass-roots recycling workers are literally the only reason China has any domestically sourced materials to fuel its powerhouse of production. They kind of work in this formation:

Excuse the kindergarten scratches coupled with instinctual cursive? Transfer points are used to collect individual recycler's wares and process them through additional sorting and/or compressing

Next question, what flows through these tracks? What kind of materials are collected. Well this, this solely depends on what the market is asking for. Apparently at the present, the market is doing well for copper, iron, paper, and plastics. However, most people I’ve talked to in the recycling industry have agreed that prices have been falling over the past few years for all materials.

Copper Casually Plumetting Over the Past 5 Years

Aluminum Prices Over the Past 5 Years

Why this sudden decline in natural resources prices? Largely speaking it seems to be due to the exact matter at hand: China. China’s previous insatiable need for natural resources for its production is at odds with its slowing GDP, which has many factors that range from an aging population to decrease in exports….. but I digress.

How that relates to us specifically is what can be recycled. Take for instance, a plastic bottle, usually priced at one bottle for .05 yuan, many recyclers I’ve talked to begrudging take my (I thought carefully collected) pile of water and milk tea bottles.

The other major take aways that I want to highlight moving forward is that:

the informal street-side recyclers are running the recycling show in China

people are PAYING for their trash to be taken away, while this isn’t explicitly encouraging consumerism/waste it definitely cultivates an idea that IT’S OK TO WASTE, YOU CAN EVEN GET PAID TO PRODUCE WASTE

meanwhile countries like Finland and Taiwan are having their citizens PAY to have their garbage taken away.

China Resource Recycling Association splits up recyclables into 9 main categories as seen below:

In total, China recycled 164 million tonnes of materials, a 2.5% increase from 2012. The approximately value of this all was 572 bilion RMB, a 5.6% increased from 2012

In summary, problems in this industry:

China lacks raw materials

Licensed Recycling enterprises have high start up and operations costs

High amounts of garbage goes to underground/黑 collection and processing centers that could be potentially dangerous for the workers and for the population overall

Non centralized players:

法规定商务部门管回收

发改部门 管 利用

工商部门 管 集散市场

城乡建设部门管回收网点规划

Positives of using said applications

APP Platforms detail classification: slightly solves problem of incomplete waste sorting

Promote “trash to treasure” concept

Expands raw materials base through more efficient collection

Data on WHO is recycling and WHERE can be tracked

Over the next few weeks, I will be publishing conversations with players in the recycling world from APP founders to street sanitation workers and everyone in between! Come with me on this journey to figure out what happens when that Nongfu bottle you're drinking gets tossed to the side.

Also as a side note, this type of informal recycling to fulfill an economic need doesn't ONLY happen in developing countries, guess where this picture was taken: