The Recycling Program and Education

There are different recycling systems here, depending on the size of the city, it seems. In ZJ, the most effective way to get your bottle recycled was to give it to a kid scouring the streets for bottles. They'd carry plastic bags in their hands or big baskets on their backs to collect bottles for recycling. In return, they get some cash from the recycling depot. Kids would operate either individually or in packs. Sometimes they'd argue over who gets to have a bottle. Lesson learned, never give your bottle to a kid in the presence of other bottle searchers.

In Xichang, kids were competing with adults for the bottles. Both kids and adults would roam the city in search of that special used plastic that could bring income. Kids would operate in packs, but adults would operate individually.

Here in Chengdu, it seems to be only adults. And not only do they collect bottles, they also collect paper. I presume that Chengdu has a paper recycling facility that ZJ and Xichang do not. It is quite funny to see them hanging around the computer stores. When you walk by the computer or mobile phone stores, there are often people handing out flyers to anyone they see. Walk a few more steps, and there is someone collecting those same flyers from people for recycling.

We have bottle collectors in Vancouver too, but they operate with shopping carts, not baskets on their backs. It's kind of weird to compare how it all works. And with all these bottle collectors, I wonder if something's actually left in the recycling half of the trash bins on the sidewalk when the official garbage people come around to collect the trash.

What's crazier is the kids. I don't ever recall a kid being a bottle collector before. But here they are, collecting bottles for either their families or for themselves. It'd be much better for these kids to be in school, but until last year, it'd be too expensive. Finally, last year, education was made mandatory (and therefore free) for nine years. It's still not the full 13 years we'd get in Vancouver (Kindergarten, plus grades 1 to 12), but it's a start.

The Chinese really value education. When we were in Xichang, there was a kid who had been accepted into China's #1 or #2 university. They had banners celebrating this kid's entrance into university. Like the CITY had banners. That's crazy.

However, it's a little different in ZJ. Many parents can't see the point of their kids going to school, it seems, for several reasons. Firstly, when you graduate, what are you going to do with all the stuff you learned? There are hardly any jobs that you can get and apply yourself. What's the point of preparing for a bleak future? Secondly, you can help out your family right now, on the farm or in the shop, or whatever it is your parents do. And that help is really needed. And thirdly, is all the stuff you learn really necessary? It seems many of the parents believe that all the education is good for their kids. But many more do not, simply because of the environment in which they live. We're talking about ZJ here, not Xichang or Chengdu. Please keep them in your thoughts. This mandatory 9-year education thing is a major step forward.