Behind the Significant Production of Plastic Waste: The Social Value of Waste Pickers | CBCGDF Reduce and Pick-up Plastics Working Group

In modern cities, waste pickers and sanitation workers make an important contribution to environmental protection by picking up and sorting plastic waste. By collecting and selling plastic bottles, takeaway food containers and foam boxes, they not only reduce the burden on garbage bins but also provide resources for waste recycling. For example, the recycling price for plastic bottles is 2.2 RMB per kg, transparent fast-food containers are 2.8 RMB per kg, coloured fast-food containers are 0.8 RMB per kg and foam boxes are 1.6 RMB per kg.

Credit: CBCGDF

According to the estimation by the waste pickers, they can pick up about 2.5 kg of plastic waste daily, while sanitation workers collect many foam boxes every two or three days. These efforts have gone some way to alleviating the environmental problems caused by plastic waste.

A Daily Mail report noted that the world will produce 28 kilograms of plastic waste per person in 2024, totaling about 220 million tons. More than one-third of this cannot be effectively disposed of, resulting in more than 68.6 million tons of plastic waste being landfilled. Incineration and landfill are common disposal methods, but the former has high carbon emissions and the latter takes hundreds of years to degrade.

The original intention of plastics was to reduce dependence on natural resources, but it has led to more serious environmental problems. Therefore, increasing the recycling of plastic products is an effective way to address environmental pollution, which is also an important reflection of the social value of scavengers and sanitation workers in ecological protection.

Editor: LYJ

Check: Richard

Contact: v10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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