How the Chinese and the Swedes remove their garbage

China is too big and populous country. Especially densely populated city is its capital Beijing. And to manage rubbish is always very difficult. Specialists assert that by 2020 big cities like Beijing will not overcome it.

China has its own opinion about this problem. There are more than 170 thousand waste recycling stations. Rubbish gathering is separate and very wide business branch. It also places in a job for thousands of people most and of them are migrants as a rule. Every morning dustmen “saddle” their tricycles to gather bottles, foam plastic or debris and take it to recycling station. It’s amazing, what are people ready to do to make a lot of money. What is harder: drag waste or gather a way it not to fall down?

The stations have both advantages and disadvantages. The main drawback is insanitary conditions and harm to health of local citizens. The global urbanization has such consequences. And what is to do with household appliances? Today China is the biggest producer of computers, TV sets and refrigerators and it is necessary to think up new way to utilize or recycle it.

7 000 km away in Europe there is absolutely another system of waste recycling. So, Swedish families living in private houses pay half-price for the removal. But with one condition: people themselves separate and sort tin, paper, plastic, glass and punch organic waste.

The removal system in the apartment buildings is a little bit different. There are special containers for plastic, glass and tin, other separated rubbish and all the rest go to dustbins. Hazardous waste is taken to the special ecological stations situated at the gas stations, for example. There are blue containers for photo chemicals, inks, oils, dissolvent, fluorescent lamps; green-red containers for accumulators and batteries.

Somewhere special machines gather old newspaper, magazines and waste paper: people must leave it in front of their doors. Also in Sweden aluminum tins are given back for money. And glass is thrown out to green or white containers for transparent or colored glass respectively.

It is obvious how are different the removal systems in Sweden and China.

by Valentin Ivanov

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