Zero-waste life
Zero-waste campaign has seen some villages in Beijing cut the amount of garbage they produce by two-thirds, as Xinhua reports.
Some villages in Beijing reduce trash by two-thirds
Saizi, her parents and two dogs live an idyllic life in a small village in northern Beijing. They used to live downtown, but when her parents retired they chose to move to the countryside. Saizi quit her job and followed them.
The family works in the fields, planting vegetables and fruit trees, and lives self-sufficiently. One principle they hold firmly to is wasting nothing.
Saizi said that means taking just enough for one’s needs and avoiding extravagance, and sorting out trash for maximum recycling and reuse.
Her father jokes about his wife “being too cheap” when asked why they decided to live a zero-waste lifestyle.
“My parents lived through a long period of material scarcity, and they learned to treasure everything and to hate waste,” Saizi said. For example, her mother would cut open the toothpaste tube to make sure all the toothpaste was used.
Another “family heritage” is the creativity and skills to turn used items into something new.
After recycling the toothpaste tubes, the caps became tiny, decorative flower pots. When their electric fan — which came out of the factory in 1986 — finally broke beyond repair, they turned it into a case. When the dog tore one of her sneakers, Saizi did some modifications, added some lace and made a new pair of loafers. It was an original, oneof-a-kind design.
No food is wasted. The leftovers are usually fruit pits, nut shells, and leaves and fruit that have fallen from the trees. They can be turned into fuel for the fire, enzyme cleansers, fertilizers and naturally fermented wines. They pick up dog excrement with scoops made from tin cans, and combine it with ash from the fire and kitchen waste to make compost for the garden.
Saizi, who lectures at seminars across China to share her family’s zero-waste philosophy, said there is no such thing as waste, just resources we have not yet discovered how to use.
‘Clean’ city living
Beijing resident Tang Beijia said living green is not penance, but rather a way of pursuing happiness and a less stressful way of life.
She started her Gozerowaste lab in late 2016, when she began to cut her use of plastic and the amount of garbage she produced in an effort to make a personal contribution to the battle against plastic pollution.
“I wouldn’t call it a challenge to switch lifestyles. It only takes some time to adjust,” she said.
Tang created a 21-day process to ease the transformation, starting with writing a journal on all the waste one person produces in a day.
“When you write things down you will be surprised how much unnecessary waste you have made and how you could have avoided it,” she said. “If every one of us can order one less delivered meal, or use one less plastic bag, together we will make a big difference.”
Tang starts her day with a home-brewed coffee, made from beans bought at a farmers market and using a grinder and latte maker found at a secondhand exchange bazaar. For breakfast, she has a few slices of homemade sourdough bread and a simple, fresh organic green salad. Then to clean the dishes and mug, she uses organic detergent she made from soap nuts.
She coordinates Gozerowaste teams in major cities like Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, hosts offline events like the exchange bazaars and do-it-yourself workshops, and publishes information about ecofriendly life experiences on social networks.
“Going zero waste released me from materialistic desires and helped me focus on things that are more meaningful in life,” she said.
“Hardly any of the most important, indispensable things in life has anything to do with materials.”
Government efforts and more socially responsible businesses are important for tackling plastic pollution and the “garbage siege”, Tang said, but that does not mean people must wait helplessly for them to act.
“We can use our money as votes to support the brands and enterprises that are environmentally friendly, and we can make changes in our living habits right now,” she said.
Rural reductions
On June 6, Taoyukou village, in Beijing’s northern Changping district, became the fifth village in Xingshou town to launch a trash-sorting project to reduce rural waste. A day later, the village’s daily waste was cut by more than 66 percent.
The zero-waste initiative was first tested in Xinzhuang village in June 2016, and the other villages involved have reported similar reductions in waste output.
Before a project is launched, a team of waste-sorting experts spends months carrying out a door-to-door promotional campaign, teaching villagers how to reduce, sort, recycle and reuse waste.
When it begins, all plastic bags are banned at local businesses and public dumpsters are removed, with every household given two sorting bins and two boxes to separate their waste. Kitchen waste goes through fermentation to become fertilizer and enzyme products, recyclables are recycled, the toxic and harmful waste is handled by profes-
If every one of us can order one less delivered meal ... we will make a big difference.”
Tang Beijia, founder of the Gozerowaste lab
sional services, and the remainder — less than 30 percent — is handed over to municipal services for disposal.
Xinzhuang’s main industry is its 560 strawberry plantations. An experiment with natural fertilizer made from kitchen waste and excrement proved the fruit could taste better and contain no chemical residue.
The village has become a hot destination among Beijing’s strawberry lovers, keen to pick the fruit and savor its organic goodness. As a result, each plantation has increased its harvest season revenue by 10,000 yuan ($1,550).
This year, a town in Jiangxi province signed an agreement with a team of waste-sorting experts to start trials in all of its 55 villages, with a total population of nearly 20,000, in the hope of reducing the amount of garbage by 40 percent in a year.
Optimistic outlook
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued a trial eco-friendly code of conduct on June 5 that it is promoting along with the Ministry of Education and three other government agencies.
It lists 10 ways to improve the ecology and environment in everyday life, such as hanging on to electronic products for longer before upgrading, choosing reusable shopping bags, water bottles and lowcarbon transportation, sorting garbage, and protecting wild fauna and flora.
“I’m confident that each day a wider public is willing to make efforts to protect the environment and put in practice a green lifestyle,” said Mao Da, an environmental historian at Beijing Normal University and advocate for the Zero Waste Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes waste reduction and eco-lifestyles in China.
The alliance has been hosting “citizen forums” and workshops across the country to share and exchange experiences on waste reduction and garbage sorting.
“A harsh reality that we have in front of us is that with the rapid development of materialistic consumerism, society as an entirety has becoming more extravagant and is wasting more,” Mao lamented.
“We encourage people to live by the ‘5R principle’: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. But there is a sixth R that is also vitally important to the cause: redesign.”
He said that was a commitment by manufacturers to create eco-friendly products and to take responsibility for recycling them.