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Special Report  

Childhood “Treasure Box”

By staff reporter ZHAO YANYUAN

Children always have a soft spot for unwanted things. Once the salvation of scrap was a virtue and a necessity instilled at an early age. Cnsphoto

LI Chunxiang, who moved to live with her married daughter in Beijing, enjoys chatting with the staff at the reclamation depot of their residential community. When looking back on her childhood, her most vivid memory – apart from being hungry – is of collecting scraps. “When I was little, I picked through everything to find something to sell. It seemed everything had another use,” she recalls.

Source of Pocket Money

Li was born in the 1950s, a time of low incomes and material shortages, it was instilled in everyone to save whatever could be used again. In most families the “job” of collecting scraps for sale would be one for the kids, and became a common source of income for them. Almost every little girl or boy had a “treasure box,” in which they kept old newspapers, toothpaste tubes and glass bottles they had found, and every weekend they would wait eagerly for the scrap dealer to show up on his rounds. “Since the money we made counted as our pocket money, we were all very enthusiastic about it,” Li smiles as she reminisces.

Li remembers clearly that duck feathers fetched a high price since they could be used for filling down coats. “Eating duck was such a rare luxury – a treat we enjoyed once or twice a year at most. While the duck was being prepared, my sisters and I would stand on one side and collect, wash and dry the feathers before taking them off to sell at the scrap collection site.” Li takes delight in sharing her stories. “Back then people were very clear about the distinction between scraps and garbage. Only completely useless items could be discarded,” she says. “For example, an apple core would be garbage but orange peel would not be, since it is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine preparations. Very little got thrown away casually.”

More Trash Than Ever

Li feels strongly that families these days produce much more trash than was the case in the past. “In the old days when people heated and cooked on coal, household garbage was mainly coal cinders and kitchen waste such as vegetable leaves and fruit peel and not much else. Now that coal has been replaced by natural gas, how come there’s even more to get rid of every day?” Li is baffled.

“Back then there were very few plastic bags and we used net bags for grocery shopping. They took up no room in your pocket, and were easy to clean. But these days, you get plastic bags with every purchase and I have a real plastic bag mountain piling up at home. Some are the right size for reusing as garbage bags, but others you can only throw out,” says Li. Since China stopped shops giving away free plastic bags in 2008, Li has used reusable shopping bags; but at the vegetable market vendors still use plastic bags, and most children’s snacks and much of the other food she buys in supermarkets also come in plastic packaging. Li admits that such packaging accounts for much of her household trash.

Improved living standards in China and more abundant supplies have made life more convenient. This also means people discard more things than ever before.

“When there was not enough food, we even saved the washing up water to feed the pigs. But now I never need to worry about the next meal and all I have to think about is healthy eating. Vegetables more than two days old are no longer fresh – so out they go. And they say leftover food isn’t good for kids. I guess that’s why we have a large bag of garbage every day,” says Li.

No Place for Old Habits

For a while after Li moved in with her daughter, she kept up her old habit of collecting scraps. She put her “treasures” on the balcony, and pretty soon they were taking up almost half of the space. Her daughter was not happy with all the old newspapers, flyers, and plastic bottles stored there.

Li’s daughter Yu Hui had married a year before. The newlyweds bought a two-bedroom apartment and put a great deal of effort into the décor. The balcony was designed as a small recreation area where the young couple could read and enjoy the sunshine. But once Li moved in, the leisure space had become a “rubbish store.” In the daughter’s opinion, economic conditions are now so much better that there’s no point in collecting scraps to sell for a few extra yuan, and on top of that, the “garbage” was spoiling their living space. Looking at the beautifully decorated apartment, Li for the first time realized that a balcony full of scraps was out of place here.

Li gave up collecting scraps, but when she’s not busy, she still chats with the workers at the depot. She still laments that people discard so many reusable items. “People are much better off now, so if something is old or a little shabby they buy a replacement. They don’t want the old stuff cluttering up their space – so out it goes,” sighs Li.

New Uses for Old Things

In recent years climate change has become the focus of ever increasing concern, and people have begun to reflect on how mankind has damaged the environment. Chinese people are becoming more aware of the low-carbon lifestyle concept that stresses saving energy, reducing consumption, and protecting the environment. More and more of them have thrown themselves into practical actions to help save the planet.

On the Internet and on TV, ordinary people are sharing their personal tips and techniques for repurposing supposed waste items. Thanks to them we know we can use toothpaste tubes to remove grease from woks, cola bottles for storage, and packaging boxes as pen containers.

The attitude of Mrs Li’s daughter towards reusing old items is also being influenced by this trend. “The more the economy grows the greater the demand on limited resources. If we don’t make the best possible use of finite resources, maybe one day the earth will no longer be able to sustain life,” she now opines. This is gratifying for Mrs Li, who remarks with a smile, “It looks like scrap collecting is coming back into fashion.”

VOL.59 NO.12 December 2010 Advertise on Site Contact Us