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Waste management and environmentalism in China

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Figure 6 shows three photographs. The first (a) is of a very full load of plastic bottles on the recycler’s bike. The bottles are mostly 10–20 litre sized ones typically used for water coolers or vegetable oils. The second (b) is taken just to the right of the fully loaded bike in a side alley. It shows a young lady weighing a load of plastics on a large scale in order to calculate the value of a large bag of bottles. The third (c ) shows two men working in a cardboard collection and recycling facility. The man on the left is dismantling the boxes and then cutting them into similar sized pieces and re-stacking them neatly into a pallet sized shape. The man on the right, wearing gloves, ensures the pieces are then stacked very tightly and then compresses them by strapping them together with a machine.