WASTED
WASTE
INFORMAL PRACTICES ABOUT REUSE AND REDESIGN OMBLINE DE VILLÈLE 1
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WASTED WASTE, informal practices about reuse and redesign
一种常规的实践： 关于废品的再利用和再设计
Ombline de Villèle Master Thesis in Transcultural Design China Studio, L’École de design Nantes Atlantique Self published in January 2015
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A b s t r Ac t
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ABSTRACT
The goal of this thesis is to explore the notion of recycling, develop an all-embracing look on it. It gathers my researches and observations achieved in the frame of my end of study project, which I have been working on for over a year. I tried to go through the topic in many different ways, such as giving a sociological, economical, symbolic aspect of it. I develop in a first part the relation we have to the things which is the very beginning and the foundations of all the following reflexion. Then, a historical and economical assessment will be drawn up so as to widen our comprehension of waste management and recycling practices taking place worldwide. The third part is a closer look at the particular situation in Shanghai and gives a more specific illustration of the practices we mentioned above.
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In the fourth and last part is developed the symbolical aspect of the habits of collection, recycling and reuse. I questioned what do these behaviors tell about us, about our societies. I hope this thesis will allow you to see the recycling practices with new eyes and deepen your comprehension of such an issue.
Keywords Recycling - waste - consumption sustainability - transculturality Shanghai - behaviors
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content
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CONTENT
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . 21 1. Life of objects . . . . . . 29 Objects and purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Attachment to things . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The story of objects . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2. From production to waste . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 A brief historical reminder . . . . . . . Limits of this system . . . . . . . . . . . . Waste management . . . . . . . . . . . . Parallel practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
59 67 75 83
3. A glimpse of Shanghai informal system . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Introducing Shanghai context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Categories of workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Legal and social status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 An essential contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4. Care about things for a better living . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Recycling as a collective practice . . . . . . . . . . . The philosophy of slowness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relation to time & transculturality . . . . . . . . . . .
141 161 173 177
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . 201
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F o r e wo r d
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FOREWORD
When arriving in this new city, I have clearly been stricken by different ways of doing, behaviors and attitudes from those I was familiar with. I searched explanations for what I did not understand. Among these diverse sources of questioning, I got more interested in what I first identified as “street recycling” or “informal recycling”. It appeared to be a contemporary global concern full of stakes and opportunities. As a young designer, worried about sustainable living, I was willing to be involved in this field to give my ideas about it. I wanted to go further, see what I could bring to this field and practices.
After three years of a bachelor in space design in France, I wanted to see something else. Get somewhere else. To escape what was my routine. Change from what I knew or thought I knew. That’s why I decided to achieve my last two years of studies in Shanghai, for the Master’s degree called Design & Transculturality. After many never-ending weeks of suspense, (because the number of candidates for this master had doubled in one year), I finally got accepted among 40 other students. That was a chance to transpose what I learnt in a new cultural context, shaped by milleniums of History, several dialects and languages, tons of legends and traditions.
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I n t ro duc t I o n
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INTRODUCTION
What do we need to live properly?
That circle of buying, throwing out, replacing by new revolts me. All that behavior and mentality. Cannot bear that junk food, fast foods, that crowded supermarkets, that iStuff frenzy. All that consumption race. As an example, just consider the tendency which appeared in the last decade and sparks off controversy each year in the very first days after the 25th December: unwanted Christmas gifts’ resale. This movement has boomed with the range of products’ regular diversification and the expansion of choice, and as a result the consumers’ increasing demands, dissatisfied with what they got. The easy practice to resale on dedicated websites such as Craigslist helps too.
I come from a numerous family - we are five children - and it was part of my education to be told not to waste food, wear clothes out, furniture and so on. Then I had always been concerned about this issue. Now that I am grown-up, I try to be careful about saving in my everyday life. I am the kind of person who likes to have nothing but the essential. Alright, that is not an easy rule to follow everyday. Of course I have a certain amount of things in my place, I cannot say I have only the essential. But I am not a collector deep down. “What do I need to live properly?” This question is, in some measure, driving my way of thinking. The other stuff are kind of useless. But actually, things are a bit more complex than this. Of course I like having and keeping stuff that reminds me some memories. I do give importance to these objects. The fact is I just prefer not to buy what the consumer society is selling us through marketing wiles. I hate buying what I know I could do by myself [if I was less lazy sometimes], and what I find pointless (so many stuff actually).
Already sensitive to this question of sustainability, the way I considered it was bound to evolve when I arrived to Shanghai, such a huge city where everything is running fast. It made me mad all this packaging. One disposable polystyrene plate, oneuse wooden chopsticks and a plastic bag to wrap it all and then another one just in case, you know… All of this just for a dish! And everything is the same, either you buy your vegetables at the fresh market or buy
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INTRODUCTION
All this bunch of concerns led me to this topic. I decided to focus at the start more on the informal recycling practices because it was a colorful approach of the subject, which made me able to go deeper into the question of recycling, reuse, redesign. I got involved first in observing and analyzing this behavior from the street. Still, every little point I will broach is tightly linked to this. The product, the material thing, first led me to this subject but my thesis will not only deal with recycling of material but also with people: the grassroots are an integral part of the concern. Who are they? What are their lives? To come to the point, what is “informal recycling”? What I call like this is the street recycling system, out of any officialdom, consisting mostly in picking up, collecting, sorting out and reselling trash. I will develop the different aspects of those behaviors linked to reuse and redesign to answer the questioning “how a closer relation to recycling practices can improve our lifestyles?”
processed food in supermarket or a takeaway from a restaurant. I wondered what it should be with all these millions inhabitants in the city. Where does all this trash go? What does it become? And couldn’t we avoid this vain abundant waste? The question of sustainability had already caught my attention. Meanwhile, when wandering in the city streets, I noticed those people on tricycle ringing a bell. I was astounded seeing them. There was no similar practice in my Western cultural background I could relate or compare to. I just did not have any idea of what they were doing. It did not seem they were using it as a horn since there was nobody around! It took time for me to understand why they shook their bell, what they shouted. Who they were and what they did, in a word. They are the street workers collecting used material to be salvaged and reprocessed. ***
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LIFe
o F ob j e c t s Objects and purpose Attachment to things The story of objects
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LIFE OF OBJECTS
Objects and purpose Have you ever cherished an object as much as if it was a friend, a relative? What place objects occupy in our lives?
they are not kids anymore. But it is her who wants to grow up because in some ways Akira, the immature creative mind, is already an adult, confident in his abilities, able to navigate the city and gets a job without even trying. He is skillful to translate the weirdness of the city into imaginary terms, to transform the reality into any movie scenario. Mostly comfortable in his skin and ambitious, he manages to get little by little his own place in the capital. The same cannot be said of Hiroko, who feels more and more excluded and worthless. She is not in peace with herself. The movie is actually her story, the story of her trying to find the right ambition, the right goal for herself. We can witness her questioning and worry: she feels transparent. She has not developed completely as an adult, or even as a person‌
We live in a world where objects have taken up pretty much space. What is our relationship to objects? What can distinguish ourselves from objects? To begin with, I would like to introduce the short movie Interior Design 1 by Michel Gondry. It deals with the issue of ambition. A young Japanese couple, Hiroko and Akira, settle in Tokyo to show Akira’s first movie. The city allows them to get their mind and hands busy, as they look for an apartment to rent and a job to pay their fine. As we go along we can see Hiroko does not seem in tune with Akira, reminding him Interior Design is a short movie directed by Michel Gondry, come out in 2008. It is the first part of the international film Tokyo! composed of Interior Design, Merde by Leos Carax and Shaking Tokyo by Bong Joonho. Each of them takes place in Tokyo.
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Hiroko and Akira, just arrived33 in Tokyo. Interior Design
LIFE OF OBJECTS
A progressive metamorphosis
This movie explicitly establishes the link between humans and objects. All along, Hiroko tries to find her purpose, the occupation that will defines her. By seeking her aim, she seeks her identity. At less, it is what she thinks. Because she does not “do” anything in a society that identifies people by occupational labels, her flimsy self-esteem crumbles in the cold and cruel city. In a dialogue between Akira and Hiroko, likely the longest they have in the movie, here are the words they exchange about their goal in life: “You have to be able to define who you are in the world by what you do” Akira says. “What I like to do defines who I am” The core of the debate is how to define the persons they are. By occupation? by hobbies? or passions? Akira answers his girlfriend that her response was weak. She listed what she likes but he tells her they are hobbies, not ambition. Hiroko suffers not finding her place, not finding her ultimate occupation, the one which defines her. She fears having no purpose. What if she had not any? Even objects have purpose.
We can see her, dedicated to her boyfriend’s success, although she may dislike his film and that she begins to feel hostility from her best friend. A lady in the cinema, after the screening, confides to Hiroko the difficulty to be attached to a creative person. You have to subsume your own desires to theirs and you sometimes have the impression to exist less than them. And her problem is that she is not that self-confident, she has not found herself or what she is good at. She wonders what she is doing here. Her experiences will gradually transform her. In a surreal sequence she finally becomes a chair. And starts living in another artist’s home, invisible to him. She becomes useful but disposable. The short movie ends on Hiroko sentence: “In fact, I have never in all my life felt so useful”. ***
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Hiroko gradually turns into 37 a chair. Interior Design
LIFE OF OBJECTS
The woman finally undergoes objectification and becomes a chair, in a sort of “reverse anthropomorphism 2 ”… or interior design. It seemed easier to her to find her place in the world as an object rather than a person. Though, it may not be just the lack of a precise purpose who made her turn out to be a chair. It could be a deeper matter than this. As we said above, she is committed to her boyfriend, for his success. But his tough words “you have no ambition” discourage her when she sees she is not even up to a part-time job. No gratefulness either when she tells him she managed to get the equipment stuff back. Equipment which enabled Akira to do his first movie showing, crucial for his career. She looks abandoned by her lover. It is likely the absence of recognition that dehumanizes her. As humans, we need gratitude and recognition to feel ourselves fully exist, to find our place among others in the society. Otherwise, we are like things. Admittedly, useful but not necessarily appreciated and cherished.
Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics or behaviors to a god, animal or object.
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In a surreal scene, Hiroko has transformed 41 in a piece of furniture. Interior Design
LIFE OF OBJECTS
Attachment to things her five last years’ life. They are the precious media for work and life. Others evoked singular items, linked to themselves, as unique individuals. Related to what they enjoy. It could be their music instrument, vinyls, a drawing book, a skateboard... I was told those things whether allow them to express themselves, whether they are part of a beloved collection. Anyhow, they are objects connected to the very distinctive identity and passions of who owns them. Many talked about gifts because they remind them lots of memories. And as gifts, they are obviously linked to people. We like to remember who offered us this or that object. We give an emotional value to them. Several testimonies mentioned objects that remind them special persons, absent ones. One even told, after having first precised he is not that keen on material things, no matter pretty or ugly, ex-
We know we are more likely to love a person than an thing. I would say loving someone is better than loving an object since persons are at a higher grade than things: they can give the affection we have for them back to us. That is only one example among many others... Thus, like seems a more relevant word than love for the things. But, of course, we can also be fond of things. How deep are we attached to things? That is the question I asked to ordinary people. On a scale from 0 to 10, the interviewed 3 people’s average degree of attachment to things is 6,7. I asked them which objects they were particularly attached to. Mobile and laptop are a common answer, justified by the fact they allow us to communicate, work and file information. One put emphasis on these two objects, telling me her phone permits to keep in touch with faraway friends and her laptop contains all 3 I interviewed 58 people of different age and profession, mostly French but living in many countries.
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LIFE OF OBJECTS
with our close relations. Others allow us to blossom, by being creative and express ourselves. They can also be the material link that reminds us the persons we love, or comforts us by strongly belonging to our identity.
pensive or cheap, helpful or pointless were his gifts: they are memories of people he cares. The presents are for him an echo to cherished persons, they are worth because of the people they remind him. Lastly, a few alluded to kinds of objects such as teddy bears, the beloved one of the childhood, and little daily life things... They are essential to us, a part of ourselves. We consider them like our roots. Items that are important due to their sentimental value and what they bring to us: comfort and safety. They make us feel cosy and secure, like habits. Allow us to refocus. To destress and comfort us, make us happy. They are strongly connected to our mind and heart, our ego.
In the end if we are attached to objects, it is because they are not only physical matter: the things almost invariably relate to people. They are an extension of our being, they are tools that make us exist. The emotions that overwhelm us when we lose those treasured things are kind of an evidence of this status of “extension of ourselves”. I remember when my laptop crashed last year. When I understood it was definitely out of order, I felt naked. I felt a great lack. This sensation intensified in the following days as I could not do anything. I became aware of how useful it was, how much time I spent on it, how I just needed it. I would even say I rediscovered life without laptop... On this topic, interviewed people revealed if they lost their favorite objects, they would feel frustrated, angry and sad. More precisely, their words were “feeling empty, naked”, “uncomfortable, lost, disoriented
To summarize, what was brought out by this questionnaire is the fact that things are appreciated partly for what they are, largely for what they tell. Naturally we care about our laptop and credit card because it represents money. But most of our favorite things are the ones which tell us a story. Family jewellery demonstrate the legacy through generations, technologies let us communicate and keep in touch
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I am fond of an object, not because of this object in itself, but because 47it tells me a story, reminds me someone and good memories.
LIFE OF OBJECTS
and helpless�. That shows to what extent things may belong to our own identity. The last word, I want to mention this young man who consented to answer my questions. He described himself at start as someone absolutely not attached to material things. The only personal stuff he cares about are his sports equipment. When I asked why, he declared that it represents his freedom, permits him to live intensely, to confront nature and feel strong emotions. Isn’t it deep? Use material things to be freer... It let me thoughtful.
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LIFE OF OBJECTS
The story of objects Hiroko’s transformation into this furniture could be seen as a symbolic image meaning that every object truly has a story. A thing first exists in the mind of its creator, then is put on paper under rough lines, drawn again and again as the creator tries to grasp what will be visually his object, until the final shape. When he gets the outline he likes, it is time to design it physically. The wood becomes a shape between the creator’s hands, a living model, continuously remade, reworked and adjusted to perfection. In the creator’s eyes, these creation phases are worth. The chair he is designing is like a baby for him, coming deep from his heart and guts.
Our objects are strongly connected to us, to our lives. They tell stories. They tell something about us. They are linked to our tastes, to our identities and interests. It is sometimes astonishing to see how we can grasp somebody’s personality and passions just with a bunch of stuff. By coming into one’s home, or bedroom, it is like we enter the precious box that contains all the identity of a person. The photographer Hu Yang achieved a photo series called “Shanghai living”. Hu Yang spent a year photographing more than 400 homes in Shanghai for the series book. His photos depict the stark contrasts between the lives of the numerous residents of the city. We can catch a sight of the residents’ passions, interests, way of life. Their interior talks about themselves: how they live, with who, what they do, and why. It is amazing to see how far we are able to imagine their lives.
Once made, this chair will be reproduced hundreds, thousands, millions of times to be commercialized. Sent to people who need chairs in their homes, to sit when they work, eat, rest, talk with friends.
Objects tell stories. They also have a story. A life would even say some people. Let me take for example this chair of the short movie Interior Design.
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Tell me where you live, I will tell you who you are53 - Shanghai Living, photo series by Hu Yang
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p ro duc t I o n t o wA s t e
A brief historical reminder Limits of this system Waste management Parallel practices
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FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
A brief historical reminder 5% per year on average. In the third world, some countries (South Korea, Taiwan, the oil producing countries) come into a phase of “industrial take-off� and know growth records. These Thirty Glorious Years are explained in large part by technological innovation. The arrival of new materials, the abundance of cheap energy (oil) allow the increase of production. As well as the spread of Fordism which also generates significant productivity gains that permit to produce at a lower cost. These improvements are reinforced by new economic and social policies (cooperative efforts, trade liberalization, and the establishment of economic communities) create dynamic exchange between states.
Today as the global population grows, more and more chairs are sold. As people get wealthier, they can afford to buy more chairs for their home. As the customers get more and more demanding and their needs increase, the range of chairs widens and the choice expands. This is the outline of the consumer society. The glorious rebuild of the industrialized societies In the wake of the Second World War, industrial countries rebuild. Economical activities start again and societies find their balance again. The Thirty Glorious Years period (1945-1975) probably marked the peak of industrial societies. And the crisis introduced by the first oil shock in 1973 compelled these societies to reorganize, reaction that drove to the emergence of a new world in the early 1990s. From 1945, industrialized countries experience unprecedented economic growth approaching
The assertion of the consumer society Societies are profoundly transformed. The enrichment brings a higher standard of living. Households acquire equipment (electrical appliances) that enhance their comfort and free up time.
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Ford assembly 61 line
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
is kind of prisoner of his consumeristic desires. When his apartment is destroyed by flames, he states “That condo was my life. I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That is not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was me!”. In a consumer culture we can buy our identity, change it on a whim, because we are buying not simply clothes or furniture but a lifestyle that tells others about who we are. For Jack, identity was found in his stuff… his Ikea furniture, his AX ties, DKNY shirts etc. In a poignant scene Jack tells Tyler, “I had it all. I was close to being complete”. But now that it is all gone, without these material enhancements, Jack must set out on a path of discovery towards who he really is. That tells a lot about our contemporary societies, our ways of living: we are swamped with things. Never satisfied, we do not stop buying. We actually love to accumulate. And things have submerged our world.
Supermarkets multiply, hypermarkets appear and their number soon increase exponentially. A society of profusion is born, consumption is stimulated and stimulates the economic activity. The Thirty Glorious Years are the manifestation of the incredible success of the society based on modern industry. This time is the very moment when objects began to occupy more place in our lives. *** On this point, what comes to my mind is Fight Club 4, a famous movie that explores what is necessary to subvert the dominant paradigm of consumption. Fight Club is a scathing critique of our branded and consumable identities. The nameless narrator played by Edward Norton, sometimes mentioned as Jack, is shackled by societies addiction to material things. The fact he largely remains nameless is suggestive of that he finds his identity in those things he buys, he
4 Fight Club is an American movie directed by David Fincher in 1999 based on the novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk.
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“That condo was my life. I loved every stick of furniture in that place� - A scene picture of Fight Club movie 65
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
Limits of this system Consequences of consumerism
was a frank motion picture telling the story of the American love affair with stuff and how it is quite literally trashing the planet. But Leonard is actually not against stuff. “Consumption can be good, but consumerism is always bad, adding little to our wellbeing as well as being disastrous for the planet.”
All these last decades, was built an economy based purely on resources. Today, waste and recycling are now burning policy issues. Overconsumption and careless material use led to a flood of waste. They are costing us the earth and its resources.
Tomatoes, pigs and human beings
The fundamental problem with our material economy is that it is a linear system and we live on a finite planet. We cannot run indefinitely at this pace. “Too often the environment is seen as one small piece of the economy. But it is not just one little thing, it is what every single thing in our life depends upon” Annie Leonard says, a former Greenpeace activist and waste obsessive. She had the idea in 2007 to make a short film about the issue. The Story of Stuff 5 5 The Story of Stuff, directed by Louis Fox and narrated by Annie Leonard, is a short animated documentary about the lifecycle of material goods and our behaviours as consumers. It offers a critical look on consumerist practices and promotes sustainable ways of life.
Along the same lines, Ilha das Flores 6 gives us a close look on the effects of globalization. It is a devastating avant-garde short film by Jorge Furtado that, 25 years after its making in 1989, has not aged at all. How to summarize these twelve minutes? The film uses the tomato as its governing principle, and shows the route of this plant, from its harvest to consumption through sale and food preparation. Deemed unfit Ilha das Flores, Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado, 1989. It has been presented the year of its release in the most important festivals worldwide and got the first prize at the International Festival of the Short Movie in Clermont-Ferrand, France.
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Decomposition time of waste in oceans 69
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
for consumption, the bad tomato is thrown in the garbage, trucked on a few kilometers and ends up in the landfill of the Island of Flowers, among pigs, women and children. There, we can see quantities of garbage just thrown. The best-looking rubbish are selected by the farmers to feed the pigs. The rest ends on the ground in an enclosure and where the island residents each have 5 minutes only to come and take what they can to nourish themselves. Extremely poor, they survive on this refuse outflow. The ironic movie questions “what difference is there between tomatoes, pigs and human beings?�. The film denounces the capitalist consumer society and globalization, by highlighting the fact the chain has been disrupted: the poor humans reap what has already been thrown by wealthier humans and rejected for pigs feeding. The message it passes on is still actual in a large number of concealed places through the earth.
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Ordinary residents of Ilha 73das Flores, Brazil
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
Waste management Waste management and ecological stakes
of 200 meters. Huge pits were dug, and waste was deposited into, which was topped off with a layer of construction debris and then uniformly levelled with white sand. An average of 330 tonnes of rubbish are brought to Thilafushi every day. At one point, more than 31,000 truckloads of garbage were being transported to Thilafushi annually. Open-air burning of garbage is also practiced here. Today, Thilafushi has a landmass of more than 0.43 km2, which is leased to industrial activities such as boat manufacturing, cement packing, methane gas bottling and various large-scale warehousing. A jail just opened in November 2014. It can accommodate 100 prisoners. Their task is to set building blocks as a means of developing the island. The blog of environmental organisation Bluepeace wrote that used batteries, lead, asbestos fiber and other potentially hazardous waste mixed with the municipal solid wastes in Thilafushi island are seeping into the water and creating serious ecological and health problems in the Maldives.
Trash. This is a contemporary concern, as well shared by post-industrial and developing countries. Governments and citizens now have to deal with this tricky issue. Trash management methods differ according to each region of the world. Let us talk about Maldives Islands. Each year, approximately one million tourists visit the island nation Maldives for its sunny warm weather and stunning natural beauty. But there is an ugly consequence of this tourism, along with the Maldives own 395,000 residents: the combined trash accumulated is a headache for such a small country. To deal with the problem, the government decided in December 1991 to use a separate island as the final destination for the huge amount of waste produced by the tourism industry. Thilafushi, nicknamed ‘Rubbish Island’, was originally a lagoon called ‘Thilafalhu’ with a length of 7 kilometers and a width
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Thilafushi, alias “Rubbish Island”, Maldives. A refuse dump in paradise 77
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
This is an illustration among many others of a territory becoming overwhelmed by its economical activities and that does not control anymore its waste management. Such a mismanagement situation can be found in other countries like Bengladesh, the twelfth most densely populated country on earth; Armenia which is underdeveloped in that field and knows no waste sorting, recycling, nor reuse in its 60 landfills; New Zealand where there was no control on rubbish dumps until recently; and Brazil which favors landfills as an efficient mode of disposal but is however improving slightly its trash collection service.
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The landfill spoils the postcard perfection. Thilafushi, Maldives 81
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
Parallel practices countries has led to parallel practices and gave rise to gray economies. Predominantly in those developing countries, but increasingly in post-industrial countries as well, low-income people began to salvage by themselves reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or reuse. There are millions of waste pickers worldwide.
“Trash is back. Over the last ten years the US recycling industry has mushroomed on both the formal and informal levels, taking the form of a double-tiered system which relies heavily on informal labour for sorting and collection, while reprocessing is dominated by large capital enterprises. Informal labour in recycling falls into two distinct groups: the general population who sort their own household recycling for free (sometimes required by law), and those who collect and sort in order to sell.” 7
Trash does have value Waste collection provides crucial income for people and households. The IEMS 8 study combined qualitative and quantitative research methods to provide a deep understanding of how three groups of urban informal workers – home-based workers, street vendors, and waste pickers – are affected by
The trash gray economy The combination of these problematic situations and a context of young economies in developing
Quotation from the essay AMERICAN UNTOUCHABLES: HOMELESS SCAVENGERS IN SAN FRANCISCO’S UNDERGROUND ECONOMY, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Teresa Gowan, 1997.
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8 The IEMS (Informal Economy Monitoring Study) is a major study of the urban informal economy, led in 10 cities around the world: Accra, Ghana; Ahmedabad, India; Bangkok, Thailand; Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Bogota, Colombia; Durban, South Africa; Lahore, Pakistan; Lima, Peru; Nakuru, Kenya; and Pune, India.
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A newspaper and plastic bag collector, sorting out and packing what he got, Shanghai 85
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
roughly one million catadores in the country though a small number of them are affiliated with a cooperative or an organized group. Those people are often formerly homeless or ex-convicts. The living they earn has dwindled over the years. To help them out, cooperatives and organizations have been created around this informal activity. ASMARE is one of them. Based in Belo Horizonte, it is an association founded in 1990 by Dona Geralda Marçal. She has made it her life mission to fight for better housing, education and access to healthcare for the homeless of Belo Horizonte. In the late 2000’s, ASMARE has expanded its core business, recycling and waste management, to include helping companies make their events more sustainable, and producing and selling art made from recycled materials. The workers are taught how to transform the recyclable trash they find into new items. With the help of local artists and volunteers, the junk becomes pieces of furniture, jewelry or even works of art. Their motto says: “o seu lixo e o meu luxo” roughly translated as “your trash is our luxury”.
and respond to economic trends, urban policies and practices, value chain dynamics, and other economic and social forces. For 65% of the IEMS sample, earnings from waste picking were the main source of household income. Only about one quarter had any other income. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, waste pickers said this activity even took some of them off the streets. Informal but organized Rubbish is everywhere in Belo Horizonte. So are the catadores. They are a common sight in cities all across the country. They are the people earning a living by collecting trash in the city streets and dumps to resell it or turn it into new stuff. “Catador” in Portuguese means collector, scavenger. Working on the roads, they move forward with their rudimental vehicles - improvised pushcarts and trolleys - alongside the cars and buses. A 2010 estimate suggested they were
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“My work is honest, and yours?” - A colorful cart customized by Pimp My Carroça movement, Sao Paulo 89
FROM PRODUCTION TO WASTE
Struggle for a better recognition
are often discriminated, helping them to produce art encourages other citizens to see them in a more positive light. Besides, Mundano, a 28-year-old Brazilian street artist started in 2007 in Sao Paulo a movement called Pimp My Carroça. The movement borrows its name from MTV’s hit show Pimp My Ride. But instead of fixing up old cars, he and fellow artists repair trash carts, or carroças, and customize them with eye-popping art. With spray cans in hand, Mundano set out to change citizens’ attitude of indifference, starting with his own city. “When the carroças are new and colorful, with funny messages, people started to interact” he says. “One day they are completely invisible and the next day people are like, Whoa! Nice cart, can I take a picture?” Therefore, linking art to recycling allows them to get a better image, to go to places that they have never been before and they end up having better acceptance since their creative work gives them a good visibility.
The catadores are an enterprising group of the world’s poor that has identified market demands for their services. According to Brazil’s environment ministry, only 18% of Brazil’s recycling is performed by a formal recycling program, and the estimated one million catadores take responsibility for the rest. While the numbers of these workers is astounding, the Brazilian government does not recognize this as a formal work sector. A number of worker collectives have grown to lobby for worker rights and recognition in order to protect the population of catadores, and the families who rely on their income to survive. Working in landfills, as we can imagine, is a dangerous activity. Dengue fever spread by mosquitos, hazardous objects in the trash and the risk of serious injury from the garbage trucks are some of the perils these catadores face each day.
MARE
Mauricio Soares, an artist who heads the AScreative program, states that, as the catadores
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Two works of art by Vik Muniz, made in Jardim Gramacho landfill in 2010, Rio de Janeiro. 93 three years in the making of those installations. The documentary film Waste Land has followed him during
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gLI mpse oF s h A ngh A I InFormAL system Introducing Shanghai context Categories of workers Legal and social status An essential contribution
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Introducing Shanghai context furniture to get rid of it. As he arrives at the end of his minor lane, he just hears the well-known sound of a ringbell. A man is passing along his street, riding a tricycle with a cart behind him. As soon as he glimpses Mr Zhang and his old chair, he stops and they begin bargaining. Mr Zhang got 34 yuan for reselling his old piece of furniture.
Think again about this chair, designed by a creative mind, made with passion and dedication by a craftsman. It ended up in the house of Mr Zhang, a run-of-the-mill Shanghainese dweller. He is now in his fifties and has used the chair for about three decades. Which has suffered the effects of time. A leg has broken as the son in his childhood loved to play on this furniture. It came replaced by another wooden leg Mr Zhang made on his own from a salvaged piece of wood. It was not the same color and wood variety but at less they were still able to use it. Then the wood wore out and became rough so his wife sewed a plain cushion and fixed it on the seat. Later, Mr Zhang had to patch the very end of the chair’s four legs as they were eaten into by wood pest. He bought smart copper caps to strengthen the furniture. But in the end, the chair has become a bit old and the couple does not need it anymore. They have been offered brand new seats. One morning, before going to work, Mr Zhang takes the outmoded wooden
In Shanghai has set up an informal system of waste collection down the street. I have been observing these special practices for months, trying to comprehend this organization, to approach and grasp their process. The first contact I had -but ignoring it- with the informal recycling system in Shanghai was the sound of the bell they ceaselessly ring. The sound of active recycling in the city.
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Shanghai informal street workers are a common sight in the city. They pack their stuff in the simpliest way: using just bags and ropes. 101
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When did this activity start? Though trash management is a contemporary concern, the collection of worn out and second hand objects is not a new practice in Shanghai. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were many trades that dealt with collecting, refurbishing and cleaning.9 It could be noticed clothes menders, poor women sitting outside the wall of a factory, who earned their living by patching some poor male workers’ clothes who did not have a wife or relatives to do it for them. Those female sewers were dressed themselves in darned clothes. This activity could be found in dry cleaning shops also where one or two women were in charge to mend clothes for the customers, especially stockings. On the streets you could bump into a secondhand goods collector which was passing from door to door in order to collect used stuff such as broken
housewares, worn out shoes and so on. In fact, if you had broken down some goods, you should not throw them away. You were able to get out some money from it. The collector was carrying two baskets on a bamboo shoulder pole and paid a few copper coins for the old things. Among the activities of collection, there were men who picked up cigarette butts on the floor and resold them to a cigarette seller on the street. Which one would use a very small machine to put the tobacco into the cigarettes again, very likely the cheapest cigarettes, for poor smokers. What this man did was called “catching crickets”. Secondly, other men walked along the lanes and shouted loudly trying to collect tinfoil ashes. He was more likely to be seen in the small alleyways and minor streets after the first and fifteenth day of each month. It is still unclear how he could earn money in this way… The phenomenon disappeared a while ago. Lastly, a more ominous case is “collecting
Those former trades are well described and explained in the book Old Shanghai (贺友直画老上海), by He Youzhi & Wang George, 2010.
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bodies”. It is about cleaning the streets of the dead corpses because, as you may know, Shanghai was at this time the “Paradise for Adventurers”, and each morning you could pass by either crying or dead babies on the roadside. A guide book published in the West in 1934 asserted that in the year 1933 there were 5,735 abandoned bodies in Shanghai streets, but the real figure might be much bigger. Workers picked up the bodies from the ground and put them onto a cart. Honey collector. Here is a very poetic name. Much more than the activity that it designates. Actually the first job to do in the morning was to empty the chamber pots. A man in charge of the collection passed through the streets shouting his arrival or ringing a bell and women arrived to empty them in his barrow. In her autobiographical book, Journey in Tears10, Chow Ching Lie (Zhōu Qínlì) describes this moment as a familiar habit. She was used to hear, every morning, the sound of the ringing bell. That was
the sign of a sudden hustle. As soon as the bell noise was heard, every woman of the houses -because it was the task of women- got out to clean the chamber pots. That routine marked the beginning of the day. In the 1920’s, street cleaners had already been existing. They worked in residential areas such as the French Concession or the International Settlement. They used a plain handmade bamboo broom and had a handcart to put their garbage in. In those days they might have mostly tree leaves and some little food remains to sweep rather than plastic bottles! Their condition was modest. The situation has obviously evolved but some things remained similar until today. It is still possible in Shanghai to earn money by giving -selling actually- your out of order devices and old stuff. And the sound of the ringing bells is still heard in the city.
10 Journey in Tears, which French title is Le Palanquin des Larmes (1975) is the autobiography of Zhōu Qínlì, a Chinese writer and a classical pianist, in which she tells her life in Shanghai, from childhood to marriage, before to leave in Hong Kong.
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A good working day. A free collector collecting newspapers 107 and cardboard from residential compounds
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Categories of workers There are many different groups in Shanghai of -let us call them like this- street cleaners. Many different uniforms, statuses, wages. There is first the category of squads depending on the local authorities. It means they are directly employed by Shanghai city’s urban sanitary department. Among them: groups driving waste trucks to pick waste bags in the street cans; other teams care about cleaning the roadway with a truck spreading water; at last the sweepers with bamboo brooms and a dumpster. Some are only pedestrian and others have a tricycle. Sweepers work along the sidewalk, sweeping the leaves, the dirt, the meal leftovers. Their broom is handmade and rather rudimentary: bamboo leaves and branches attached together with a string. It seems a sight of rural techniques in this well-developed city. Contrasted Shanghai‌ All of them got a uniform, light blue or bold blue, and work for Shanghai authorities.
The second category of street cleaners is all those who depends on private companies specialized in urban cleaning. They have their own vehicles and uniforms. They are three for example in the district of Xuhui. Then, we have the independent street workers. They do not have neither boss nor fixed salary. They work on the streets, in the compound areas, in the metro stations. In big letters, they collect stuff, sort it out and resell it. These waste pickers gather household or commercial, industrial waste. They may collect from private waste bins on the edge of pavement or from dumpsters, along the streets and waterways or on municipal dumps and landfills. Some rummage through garbage to amass and sell recyclables to middlemen or businesses.
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Daily scenes of street cleaners and waste 111 pickers on Shanghai streets
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ghai streets, that amazes you at the beginning, but in the end you just do not care. We can see the first ones waking up and starting the job at dawn. All day long he keeps riding slowly his bike and ringing his bell to warn urban dwellers, hoping they have something to give. He passes along minor streets, ahead of citizens’ houses, knowing the good places. Then, he also collects waste from public dumps, on the sidewalks, and in the street trash cans sometimes. Moreover, a good deal is to go to construction sites to pick all material waste that remains around. It is a profuse source of stuff to be collected. I remember in my first months in Shanghai when I was working as an intern in an interior design agency. Once or twice a week we went on site to follow the construction work of a new store in a shopping mall. Since the building job was fairly noisy, it happened in the evenings. And while we were discussing, advising, checking, we could catch sight of people aside waiting for the end of the construction
I took an interest in the informal recycling system and thus observed them to get more understanding of this system. All along my investigations and searches, I have identified the following personas11 : • The bike rider collector: he is middle-aged in most cases, most frequently a man but there are also women. They may work in couple, one of them riding the bike and the other one sat in the trailer. He can be specialized in one material collection or collect equally different kinds of items. Among the hunted material are plastic, cardboard, wood, metal, fabric, e-waste. He owns his bike but can share it with one or two coworkers (friends or relatives), this is his working tool. He goes through city streets of his neighborhood that he consequently knows inside out. He attempts to catch the passersby’s attention by a colorful means: he continuously rings a bell as he is moving forward. This is a very typical sound in ShanSince there is no established designation for people working in this informal field, I had to find names for each category of them. You may find names too subjective or not specific enough but this is a personal outlook.
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ker and is almost always elderly. I would say there are roughly as many women as men involved in. You will meet them wandering in the streets where they scavenge in trash bins and pick garbage on sidewalks. In metro stations too, they get underground and check each trash bin looking for plastic bottles and metal cans. They take metro for one-station trips in order to achieve a complete check of each bin in each station. I remember once in the metro, I offered my sitting place to an old man but he declined. Then I just noticed his bags filled with plastic bottles and I seized he was a scavenger. In fact, he got off at the next station. They usually carry heavy hessian bags on their shoulder or drag it behind them on the ground. Just looking at them, we can feel who these people are: modest farmers coming from their rural province, hoping to get more money in a big city. Indeed, almost the whole of them are migrants. Wrested from the countryside and traditional customs they were used to, they arrive in this new fast-moving environment. Their faces are often wrinkled and creased. Tanned by the sun, they are tired but smiling. It is always sweet to see them smiling from ear to ear with thankfulness
day session. They were staying here with their carts and huge hessian bags so as to collect all the remaining material as soon as the staff workers moved out: metal, wooden planks, bricks. • The e-waste specialists: they nearly always ride a moped and you can spot them as they are stuffed with sizeable TV, fans and computers of the previous decade. You cannot overlook them with their loud announcements as they go through the streets. As the bike rider shakes his bell to draw attention, the e-waste collector owns a tape player that broadcasts on a loop his recorded message. The monotonic voice shouts in Chinese “空调，电脑，电话，电视，风扇 ， 微波炉!” which means “air conditioner, computer, telephone, TV, fan, microwave!”. Even if you do not understand Chinese language, you can guess he is listing all the items he tries to get: every kind of electronic devices. • The pedestrian collector: he or she does not have any vehicle or else a simple trolley to push forward. He seems less wealthy than the ordinary wor-
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This free collector shakes his bell to catch the attention of117 residents, in case they have something to get rid of...
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cling too. It seems he is a bike rider collector, and they share the collected material to resell it. Therefore their activities are complementary, they work on different steps of the recycling chain. Each of them is a link in this chain.
when you give them your empty bottle to add to their collection. • The compound ayi 12 : nearly always a woman, she is a sedentary trash collector. Living in the building, she cares about the garbage produced by the residents. She tears the trash bags up and picks what is worth for her like paper, cardboard, plastic, metal. It is a first step in the sorting out process. She sorts out the gathered stuff and then, when a certain amount is reached, she sells her collection to a street recycling worker. Some residents directly give from their own to the ayi the trash they know will be picked up. As an illustration, there is in the first floor of my building a special place in the corridor where people let their used cardboards boxes and empty water bottles for the ayi. She has got her chair here and sits few hours a day to sort out the material and pack it all. I occasionally see her husband which is involved in recy-
In very large compounds, there are several strata of those trash-collecting people in a well-organized system. At the first level, there is one person assigned to each floor of the building, caring about picking the residents’ trash bags at this floor (there can be numerous appartments at one only floor!). Then, they resell it to the second people at the bottom of the same building who are in charge of sorting garbage. Once it is sorted, those people will sell it again to the people responsible for gathering all the compound sorted garbage. Those last will eventually trade this material on the street recycling market. Everyone gets a little profit on this waste business.
12 阿姨 (āyí) in Chinese means auntie and is commonly used in China to call a middle-aged woman instead of Mrs.
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The corner of the compound ayi, where she stocks all that she has collected, 121 cardboard, plastic, old stuff... Sometimes messy, sometimes tidy.
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Legal and social status A blurry legal status
And yet, I was discreet! or acting like a innocent tourist who would discover an amazing unknown practice. I remember that time, I was in Hongkou district near the canal and, by following a free collector, I found one of these warehouses. I stopped and got out my camera as an astound and curious wanderer. A few minutes later, this man was walking towards me and told me words in Chinese that I did not grasped. But though he was not aggressive, the meaning was clear enough.
The street recycling system in Shanghai seems to be rather ambiguous in the legal domain. And the boundaries are vague. What is legal? illegal? During my research and interviews, I found that this activity was sometimes illegal, sometimes not. It left me doubtful for weeks. When observing and following the people I experienced those blurry boundaries. I followed free collectors with no problem. I just tried to keep discrete so as not to get myself noticed. During the trip I more or less met no difficulties. Until the trash pickers reached the reselling center, a warehouse where they sell their stock. That is the point where it became a little bit more troublesome: the selling step. When the recycling centers buy stuff loads to waste collectors from the street. As this step, I kept taking photos of the scenes and it occured from time to time a man came towards me and told me to stop shooting.
Actually, the management and processing of the garbage by those warehouses is legal. It becomes legal from the very moment the recycling center has acquired the collected waste. But all the process that is ahead such as collecting, weighing and dealing, all this street business is illegal. Until the purchase of trash by the recycling centers. That is why the men did not want me to shoot the scene of purchase, as they were weighing loads and paying the collectors.
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“no photo!” A reselling center, Hongkou district, Shanghai 上海 协鹏 废物利用 回收站, 回收 各类 废旧 物资 “Shanghai 125 XiePeng recycling trash, all kinds of wasted materials”
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the bottom level of society. Without them, could the people above live so comfortably?” Another added “I cannot imagine Shanghai without their work, the city would be messier, dirtier. We would be living in piles of garbage” when I asked him what he thinks about waste collectors’ work. “I believe they know they play a key role in an important service the society needs” said Jie.
Ultimately that is quite contradictory statements since the recycling centers do need the trash pickers’ informal job to get the wasted materials. An excluded society? I enquired Shanghainese people about how do they consider the recycling informal workers, their work, their social status. The testimonies I gathered told me that waste pickers, city cleaners and sanitation workers belong to a group of people who face little consideration and are rated at a low level of society, who are often discriminated and even face safety risks.Many urban dwellers regard waste pickers as nuisances. “People do not see them, almost as if they are invisible” someone told me. People do not look at these people; nobody says ‘good morning’ or ‘thank you’.
I found that some of the trash pickers seemed pretty comfortable with their situation, as street workers and informal city cleaners. Those little rides allowed me in a certain way to put myself in their shoes, discover how they could feel their way of living. I was pleased to encounter their personalities. It occured I met some cheerful and outgoing people, ready to talk and laugh. I am used to move in city by bike -the easiest way according to me- and this is a good means to get in contact with the street recycling workers. How many times I was told a joyful hello! just overtaking or passing a trash collector. And when I was about to collide with a tricycle, he or she just had a chuckle and smiled at me.
But the work they do is worth. Awareness is rising little by little about this community. One stated: “The greatest people in China are these grassroots at
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A Chinese elderly waste picker bringing 129 back a load of foam boxes
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“Yet many homeless recyclers do not resent this badly paid, stigmatized and dangerous work, but instead enthusiastically embrace it as a way to prove their worth in a society which has reduced them to the status of ‘bum’.” 13
Quotation from the essay AMERICAN UNTOUCHABLES: HOMELESS SCAVENGERS IN SAN FRANCISCO’S UNDERGROUND ECONOMY, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Teresa Gowan, 1997.
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An essential contribution Small ants and invisible superheroes
If they were not here to do this large cleaning task down the streets, one guesses the city’s face would be transformed and the citizens’ behaviors a bit different. First, the city authorities would have to deal, in addition of what they already do, with all the wasted stuff let in the streets. They already care about trash bags collecting and roadway cleaning. They should take charge of the miscellaneous waste as well. Bulky things like old mattresses, broken furniture...
When observing the workers of this informal system, I had in my mind the image of ants working humbly together for a greater task. I could not get this idea out of my head. They are independent, working alone, or with a partner at times, in their own district section. Each has one’s specific task. But they are countless, so many laborers disseminated all over the city with one joint goal. It looks like a family or a solid society. “They are like small ants cleaning the earth. It is not miserable, but a united society, full of a little glory for the excluded. It is a real enterprise to restitute the noble matter of trash in the circuit, it is a beautiful initiative” said Danielle Mitterrand about the waste pickers in Brazil. While they seem rather invisible, tiny actors in huge cities, they are still essential to the city. While each is doing the job at such a small scale, the consequence of their collective effort is massive, up to the scale of the city.
Or else the citizens’ behaviors would have to change. They would not drop unwanted objects anywhere on the street but adopt new reflexes and organization. Whether they would go to dumpings to get rid of stuff, or resell it to a private individual as a second-hand object, or give it directly to the city cleaning services when they pass picking the garbage, or even try to rethink the object and reuse it.
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Anyway with Shanghai current waste management organization, we need them as complementary actors and a significant help.
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A b ou t t h I ng s F o r A b e t t e r L I v I ng Recycling as a collective practice The philosophy of slowness Chinese approach Relation to time & transculturality
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Recycling as a collective practice vernments did not just seek to manage waste better but they questioned the very inevitability of waste.
As we have seen before, recycling in China is a collective process. Social behaviors are shaped by this practice. It involves people and brings different groups and communities together. The collecting and recycling works are part of the social life. Therefore, waste is the means to socialize, meet and forge bonds with people. To tell the truth, recycling creates social fabric.
Nowhere is the phrase “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow� truer than in the small town of Capannori, where a small but determined movement to stop the construction of an incinerator led to an Italy-wide grassroots Zero Waste movement. The area has now one of the highest municipal recycling rates in Europe and is an example of strong policy decisions and community participation achieving groundbreaking results. This town of 46,700 inhabitants near Lucca in Tuscany, was set to be just another step in the relentless march of waste incineration in Italy. The northern European model of burning waste to avoid the environmental and social problems associated with landfill and to produce energy was gaining traction in Italy, a country beset with a dramatic and urgent waste management problem. Local medical organizations and even environmental NGOs put up little
Whether it is by picking up trash from the roads or collecting waste materials to raise money for schools, many simple programs that make a community stronger can be built upon the benefits of recycling. Many people have found that their collective efforts in proper waste disposal have made their towns cleaner and happier. Others have found friends and supporters in their mission to change the world. There are plenty of examples of collective initiatives which base is recycling. Capannori is one of them. A town in Italy where local citizens working with businesses and go-
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resistance, seeing incineration as the least-bad solution to a seemingly impossible dilemma. Business interests and pressure from northern Europe contributed to a rush to incineration that seemed unstoppable. That was a primary schoolteacher, Rossano Ercolini, who recognized in 1997 the potentially damaging effects the planned local incinerator would have on the residents’ health and the surrounding landscape. With the help of Dr Paul Connett, a world expert on incineration and Zero Waste, he set about convincing local residents of the potential danger of erecting an incinerator in their community. The movement was successful in blocking construction and soon spread to three other communities threatened with incineration in the region. The alternative Tasked with implementing an alternative to incineration, Ercolini decided that the only approach was that of waste reduction. He took over the running of the local waste collection corporation (ASCIT) to
create a door-to-door waste collection pilot scheme. After a year he stepped down from his role and went back to campaigning against incineration around Italy. Ercolini managed to persuade the town council of Capannori to be the first in Europe to sign up to the Zero Waste Strategy in 2007, committing to sending zero waste to landfill by 2020. Door-to-door collection was introduced in stages across the municipality between 2005 and 2010, starting with small villages, where any mistakes could be identified and corrected early on, then extended to cover the entire municipal area. By that time, 82% of municipal waste was separated at source, leaving just 18% of residual waste to go to landfill. It means they had already much reduced some waste streams while creating jobs. In 2012 a number of villages in the municipality became subject to a new ‘Pay As You Throw’ waste tariff, where the frequency of collection per household is measured using microchips in stickers on residual waste bags, scanned by a reader on the collection vehicle. In those areas the new tariff incentivized better separation and prevention, driving local source separation rates up to 90%.
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The “Pay As You Throw” waste tariff system. The microchip in the sticker of a residual waste bags is scanned before collection. 145
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Transparency and consultation
in the village of Lammari in 2011, where items such as clothes, footwear, toys, electrical appliances and furniture that are no longer needed but still in good condition can be repaired where necessary and sold to those in need, thereby diverting them from landfill and serving a vital social function. The centre is steadily expanding its activity- in 2012, 93 tonnes of objects were dropped at the centre and in 2013 those figures looked set to rise. According to Rossano Ercolini, “The record figures from the Lammari ‘Ecology Island’ (drop-off point for bulky waste and reusable items) show that our culture is changing, partly due to the municipality’s policies. Whereas before, people threw everything away, now they realize that recovering things not only benefits the environment, but also those who can buy them at affordable prices”. The centre also provides training in upcycling skills such as sewing, upholstery and woodwork, so as to spread the values and practice of reuse as far as possible.
Local politicians recognized that the key to their success with the door-to-door collection plan and other zero waste measures was the early and active consultation of residents. Meetings were held in public places to gather input and ideas and involve the local population in the Zero Waste Strategy. Printed information was sent to every address. A few weeks before door-to-door collection was introduced in a given area, volunteers distributed free waste separation kits to all homes, including the various bins and bags required and further printed information. Volunteers were trained to answer residents’ questions about the new scheme, all of which meant that participation was smooth, immediate and effective. One man’s trash is another’s treasure Not only has work been done to improve recycling rates, but emphasis has also been placed on reuse. The municipality opened its own Reuse Centre
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A sustainable store of unpackaged goods, avoiding the packaging 149step and the disposal of hundreds plastic bags per day.
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relates to the high percentage of Capannori residents who received literature about the changes (98.6%), attended meetings about changes in collection (46%) and know where to go to ask for information about waste collection (91%).
The Short Chain, a blessing for local agriculture Two self-service refill stations for milk were opened, introducing a model of food distribution called the short chain . The stations are supplied directly by a local farmers’ cooperative and consumers buy without the intermediary of a packaging plant or retailer, so that they pay lower prices and farmers make more on each liter. It has been enormously successful, with 200 liters a day sold through the stations and 91% of customers regularly refilling their own containers, thereby cutting about 90,000 bottles out of the waste system.
A commited community Taking a proactive, holistic approach and involving residents in all stages of policy development are the essential elements that have led Capannori to top the European waste prevention leagues and, through its position as the Zero Waste Network’s Flagship Municipality, inspire other communities to aim higher than just fulfilling recycling targets. Its committed, visionary leaders have seen opportunities rather than problems, and through transparent engagement with the population have made this the achievement of an entire community. This clearly highlights the strong connection between recycling and community. It shows how able are those practices to strengthen the community and how good can be the impact and the brought social benefits.
Good communication is the key A study carried out by La Sapienza University in Rome, comparing door-to-door collection in three communities in Italy (Capannori, Rome, Salerno) found that, in Capannori, participation (99% of inhabitants sort waste) and satisfaction (94%) were higher than in the other two communities. This cor-
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Empowering the citizens so as to get a more 153responsible cycle of consumption
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Collecting creates opportunities
Collaborative consumption
All around the world, in places where there is a large gap of wages, waste management creates economical and social opportunities, often in the form of informal employment like trash picking. In some regions, the activity of garbage collection is sometimes the lever to take people off the streets. In developing countries as well as in post-industrialized ones, can be found this “underground trash economy”. In her essay American Untouchables, Teresa Gowan shows how scavenging in United States has become a primary source of income for people who are excluded from the shrinking formal labour market. Although waste pickers often face low social status, dreadful living and working conditions, and little support from local governments, there is a growing recognition of the fact they contribute to the local economy, to public health and safety, and to environmental sustainability.
Lastly, a new trend which gets us off the treadmill of “more, more, more” is the collaborative consumption, as known as “sharing”. It conserves resources, gives people access to stuff they otherwise could not afford and builds communities. Bike share programs in major cities is a widespread example of it. But there are also online platforms that let us share everything from our cars to our homes to camping gear. There is just no reason that every house needs its own specific appliances like a power drill, a scanner, a wheelbarrow, a bike pump, when we can share. Besides, through collective actions, the community builds stronger. When we are all committed to one same goal, we can see how our efforts positively affect the environment and our lives. It is a rewarding practice too.
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San Francisco, California, is also operating 157 its own Zero Waste campaign.
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The philosophy of slowness The struggle between fast and slow
fying jobs in the belief that the sacrifice will pay off in the long term. Almost 50% of workers report feeling blue or depressed at work at least twice a month. Reasons for deferring happiness range from funding expensive lifestyles to accumulating as much wealth as possible prior to retirement and fearing the consequences of leaving a demanding job. The fallout from “deferred happiness syndrome” is felt by our family and friends, our wellbeing and, just as keenly, our environment.
Have you ever felt swamped with nothing but your daily life, like a long-term exhaustion? The fast pace of our modern lives made them overly hectic and emotionally out of kilter. We all want to be happy. And we know that money does not buy happiness. Yet the fast life is all around us –fast food, fast cars, fast talk– as we chase more time to make more money to boost our happiness. Sound familiar? A survey led in 2002 in Australia 14 has found that more than 60% of people believe we cannot afford to buy everything we need –and this figure includes nearly half of those in the richest 20% of the population. As a result, 30% of full-time workers are deferring happiness, enduring long hours in unsatis-
“Today’s world is full of fast-paced change, many options and numerous demands,” says Susan Pearse, founder of Mind Gardener, a practical approach program to revive the art of paying attention. “The amount of change we experience in a year is about the equivalent of what our grandparents experienced in their lifetime. As busyness increases, so
Report in November 2002 of this survey done by the Australia Institute, titled “Overconsumption in Australia, The rise of the middle-class battler”
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And so the slow living movement was born. Founded by Carlo Petrini, it began with slow food and soon burgeoned into a whole way of life spanning areas such as urban living, travel and management. Today it is a worldwide movement that promotes connection to food, families, culture and community. It encourages us to live life well and not get caught up in the rat race. It appears as the antidote to our busy lifestyles, promoting a simpler life where quality trumps quantity.
too does the occurrence of stress-related illness and depression. It seems the more we have the unhappier we are.” The solution would be to slow. Down. Live in the moment and be happy now. Focus on the things that really matter. It puts you on a path of increased happiness, better health and stronger relationships with your family. Not to mention reduce your eco-footprint by changing the way you consume.
“Consumer culture has turned the world into a giant smorgasbord of things to do, eat, buy, experience, and the natural human response is to want to have it all – which simply leads to hurrying it all,” says Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness 15. “We used to read, now we speed read, we used to walk, now we speed walk, we used to date, now we speed date. And even things that are by their very nature slow, we try to speed them up too“ he said in
Introducing the slow movement In the late 1980’s a McDonald’s restaurant opened on the Spanish Steps in Rome. The locals were outraged – it contradicted the Italian way of life, promoting fast food over time-honoured culinary traditions. Hamburgers were in and homemade pasta out. The reaction was not long in coming.
Carl Honore is an award-winning journalist whose revolutionary first book, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (2005) was an international bestseller, published in more than thirty languages.
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The Slow movement promotes mindfulness and connection to the present time. 163
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a Ted talk in 2005. He told that, walking past a gym in New York he saw an advert for a new course: that was speed yoga… “Along the way, speed has become our universal default option, an end in itself, because there is a powerful cultural taboo against the very idea of slowness – slow is almost a dirty word in our culture.” The slow movement embraces snail’s pace, giving you the freedom to exchange the societal pressures to earn more and enjoy the most important things –relationships, happiness, health, cooking, eating, traveling. Slow food The slow food movement promotes the preservation of food traditions as well as the agricultural sustainability and biodiversity. It supports the principles of ‘eco-gastronomy’. The slow food movement is about protecting food heritage, supporting food producers and making sure the right thing is done throughout the entire food chain. It is about good, clean and fair food. Good meaning tasty, fantastic
food. Clean meaning produced with respect to the environment. Fair meaning that everyone involved in the process has been treated fairly. Slow travel It might happen to you coming home from a holiday more exhausted than before you left. The lure of visiting seven countries in two weeks is often difficult to refuse, particularly considering the distance we need to travel to even reach another country. But this need to tick attractions off our bucket list has a significant eco-footprint. Instead of keeping a hectic schedule, slow travel encourages you to live like the locals and explore each destination thoroughly to experience the local culture. Slow travelers assume that they will not see everything on one trip, that there will be other trips. The environmental benefits are many. You will generate fewer transport emissions by traveling less often on more sustainable modes of transport, reduce your food miles by enjoying delicious local produce and meet loads of interesting locals.
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Slow cities Forget the fast lane. It is possible to enjoy urban life minus the traffic, noise and crowds. There are 147 slow cities in 24 countries. To achieve the status of a slow city, a city must agree to accept the guidelines of slow food, work to improve conviviality and conserve the local environment. It can have no more than 50,000 residents and must adhere to 55 criteria, including environmental policy, infrastructure, quality of urban fabric and encouragement of local products and produce. Slow cities have less noise, traffic and pollution, and aim to be litter and graffiti free. They are not opposed to progress; rather, the movement is about preserving the unique community characteristics and working with technology to plan for a sustainable future.
vestments grow, our knowledge of where our cash is headed and its impact on people and the environment is reduced. The slow money movement seeks to steer investors to smaller systems, more local enterprises. The term refers to investors who shun traditional channels for direct investments whereas the money goes to a local agriculture program, social organization or organic grocery store. Money is exchanged locally rather that globally for the benefit of growers, sellers and shoppers in the region. The slow money movement recommends the financial industry to focus on local businesses and sustainable enterprises in the long term. Benefits of a smart sustainable investment are twofold: you will turn a profit and make a contribution to the green economy. Slow mind We may have already experienced feeling mentally and physically cluttered. Our home littered with more stuff than we know what to do with. Being constantly thinking about the past or future rather than the present.
Slow money From banks in the Cayman Islands to Switzerland and everywhere in between, money zips around the world faster than we can comprehend. And as the distance between investors and their in-
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The psychological concept of mindfulness is intrinsically linked to sustainability – it tempts us to pay attention to what is happening now without brooding over the past or fretting about the future. Being mindful drives to great improvements for wellbeing. Living in the moment empowers us to be much more able to enjoy simple pleasures and as a result, consume less stuff. Focusing on the present make us more likely to have greater emotional strength and experience fewer bad moods, less stress. When we are mindful we are consciously paying attention to things without the chatter of a busy mind. It is like a mini meditation and achieves the same benefits that science has found in these activities.
change can have sizeable outcomes on environment such as reducing waste, lower the gas emissions of transport; and on economy like enhancing the local system.
All these alternative practices counter the actual pressure of consumerism and drive us to a better harmony with things. We are not anymore in a behavior of consumer but in a well-balanced simple life. In this alternative way of living, we are not craving for more-more-more but enjoying what we have. This
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Positano. One of the 42 slow cities in Italy 171
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Chinese approach ture becoming one, the Taoist view of the Tao reflecting nature, or the Buddhist belief that all living things are equal, Chinese philosophy has helped our culture to survive for thousands of years. It can be a powerful weapon in preventing an environmental crisis and building a harmonious society”.
Today, Chinese new generation awareness is rising towards the sustainability issue and the significance of recycling. Nevertheless, the idea of recycling is nothing new in China. It is part of the Chinese thinking and living to seek harmony and balance with what surrounds us. We can for example catch a sight of this relation to things and environment in Confucianism or Taoism thoughts.
The confucianist teaching advises being respectful towards the past and the future. This respect to the interests of past and future generations is key to the Confucian view of the self and groups. That signifies we are the very element to be a harmonious link between them. We have to live our life properly and wisely not to bring discord to others. To the question, “Who am I?” Confucius answers, “I am the child of my parents and the parent of my children.”
In Chinese philosophy In 2008 Pan Yue, China’s vice minister for environmental protection, asked China to capitalize on traditional Chinese religions so as to promote ecological sustainability. He said, “one of the core principles of traditional Chinese culture is that of harmony between humans and nature. Different philosophies all emphasize the political wisdom of a balanced environment. Whether it is the Confucian idea of humans and na-
Li (禮) is a classical Chinese word which finds its most extensive use in Confucian and post-Confucian Chinese philosophy. Li encompasses not a
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A pragmatic relation to things
definitive object but rather a somewhat abstract idea; as such, it is translated in a number of different ways. Most often, li is described using some form of the word “rite”, “reason” or “ratio”, but it has also been translated as “custom”, “mores”, and “rules of proper behavior”. Li embodies the entire web of interaction between humanity, human objects, and nature. Confucius includes in his discussions of li such diverse topics as learning, tea drinking, titles, mourning, and governance. In Neo-Confucianism li is discussed explicitly as underlying reason and order of nature as reflected in its organic forms.
I have noted through daily life observations and experiences that, generally speaking, the wealthier people get, the less they know how to manage. Whereas the less they have money, the more they are resourceful, ingenious. A Belgian writer, Henri Michaux, depicted the Chinese as very proficient persons. “The Chinese people is a born craftsman. Everything we can discover by tinkering around, the Chinese found it. The wheelbarrow, printing, engraving, the gunpowder, the kite, the taximeter, the watermill, anthropometry, acupuncture, blood flow, maybe the compass and a great number of other things… The Chinese is a craftsman and a skilled one. He has got the fingers of a violinist. Without being skillful, one cannot be Chinese, this is impossible.” 16 This observation is an extract translated from French of Un Barbare en Asie, published in 1933, in which Henri Michaux discloses his impressions and analysis of the Chinese society and context, after he came back from a journey in India, China and Japan.
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Relation to time & transculturality the fact they suffer from many causes that gives them an added value. Something more. If we consider flea markets and car boot sales, we can understand this value of the “used stuff�: collectors search the object that has really lived, existed. They want to feel this, the object that has a story. He will notice the lovely little damage, the small scratch nd the repair that has been done afterwards. It is the kind of element that will motivates his purchase. He does not look for the perfect object, with no damage at all, that seems to have stayed in the attic for decades, with no one touching it, looking at it.
Every day, we use things. But how do we use them? The objects we employ, handle, are worth by the use we do of them. It is our own usage that gives it a special shape, appearance or texture. Take for instance a quill. The same object would not be the similar after 10 years of usage by yourself or by your brother. Each has a different manner of writing, a unique style. That is what will little by little shape the nib. It is you, and the way you use stuff that make them very unique. Time also makes things become unique As an object is ageing, it does not necesarily mean that it becomes plain, or unpleasant or less useful. Let us just think about the relation wine has with time. Wine does need time to reveal its ultimate taste and to be consumed thus. Like vintage cars, the more ancient it is, the more expensive it will be. Likewise, the objects can enhance themselves as they are modified, repaired, reshaped, knocked up. That is
These changes, repairs, damages, bring an added value to the object. A sentimental value, memories are linked to it. That shows it has a story. The object has improved itself through time. And in our industrialized society in which everything is made on an assembly-line, that is exactly what will make the object very unique.
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Bath time in a phone booth. It is the usage we have with 179the objects that give them their unique value
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I once caught a sight of a Chinese woman, giving bath to her baby in a phone box! If she does not need it for a phone call, so why not using it for a much more useful aim?
Furthermore, the object is the support of a story. It goes through the times, usages and cultures. Depending on the usage we do of it, it can become a transtemporal and transcultural thing. Hybrid objects hold the mark of different times, differents owners or different usages. Imagine an old piece of furniture from your grandparents. It is an ancient small table they brought back from a trip in Cambodia a long time ago. They gave it to you when you turned 20. But now a leg has just broken and you need to patch it, the small table does not stand anymore. You refurbish it with what you found in your small apartment: a plain batten from a contemporary furniture. That was a piece of an Ikea furniture. Imagine what you get now: a half Swedish, half Cambodian furniture!
Lastly, I would like to mention again the recycling process of informal waste pickers in the streets. They are wandering, from a street to another, navigating among the citizens. And they collect any stuff that is not wanted anymore to make it reprocessed. To make it turned out into a new item. It is the infinite cycle of starting over. Free collectors embody the symbolism of the continuous renewal of the society. Even their tools have a strong symbolic meaning: their bells are made out with salvaged material, a piece of metal, a bowl, a wooden stick... Without them, the renewal would not be the same. It is a great cycle in which every little thing is renewed one day or another.
It is the way you repurpose your stuff that gives sense. Give the same item to ten different people, you will get ten very unalike stuff! Each one has a different look on an item. If you give a fork to a Chinese kid, he will not know what to do with it, thereby he will find so many solutions to use it!
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It is the way we use the objects that give them their unique value. A handmade tandem 183
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CONCLUSION
an evolution on how recycling is perceived: more and more performances, installations and art works about redesign, upcycling. Recover old stuff to turn it into new ones has not a repellent image anymore. More and more handicraft shops open. While walking in the former French Concession in Shanghai, you could easily find a store of handmade jewellery, made out with salvaged candies papers or any piece of metallic items. The do-it-yourself practice is expanding and acquiring a larger consideration.
It seems this street recycling system in Shanghai tends towards disappearing. The government does not allow the old bicycles to be renewed. Those bikes are not produced anymore. Shanghai authorities probably want to improve the face of the city and this street collecting process seems dirty and not glamorous at all. It gives Shanghai the image of a two-tier city and highlights the contrasts and the economical gap between social classes. Thus, collecting workers often share one bicycle for two people. But when it finally comes to break, they are not able to replace it. However, considering how skillful they are at improvisation and resourceful when they do not have what they need, we can easily suppose this informal activity will keep going on in the city, in one way or another. They will keep doing what they are used to, just doing it in a different way, changing a little trick in their habits to palliate this vehicle issue.
Besides, the new trend of mindfulness is gaining traction. Adopting new behaviors for a better consumption, become familiar with practices of reuse, can be a source of many benefits. Keeping your old stuff to be repurposed, redesigned and reused make you save money. Rethink the objects let your creativity freely express. It makes your brain focus on a given issue to find a solution. How glad you feel when you managed to salvage pieces of old stuff to make a new one! That could seem silly but it really gives satisfaction to patch something, to success a little
Awareness about sustainable issues has been rising in China since the last years. And we can attend
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practical challenge. Be focused on a task for a while allows an active meditation and contributes to relax your mind. In our over-connected societies, we actually do need activities like this that demand to stay focused on a specific work. Avoiding zapping from a technology to another. A new trend which has recently appeared in France and United Kingdom is the meticulous coloring book for grown-ups. They are a real success. It is the sign that people feel this need deep in themselves to come back to simple activities that demand a certain focusing time.
Being a bit more focused about stuff, the way we consume it and getting a more responsible behavior bring you well-being and a better lifestyle. ***
Moreover, social enterprises are mushrooming across China and worldwide like Squirrelz or Netspring. They show a rising preoccupation about the amount of waste we are actually producing and the determination to change this situation. The rising collective practices linked to recycling and collaborative consumption behaviors help you to forge bonds and keep connected with your neighbors.
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Books Old Shanghai (贺友直画老上海), He Youzhi & Wang George, Shanghai, 2010 360 Professions in China (中国三百六十行), Shijian Huang & William Sargent, Shanghai, 2006 Sustainability: All that matters, Chris Goodall, Great Britain, 2012 La Société de Consommation, ses Mythes, ses Structures, Jean Baudrillard, Paris, Denoël, 1970 La Consommation et ses Sociologies, Benoît Heilbrunn, Paris, Armand Colin, 2005 Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging, Jeff Ferrell, NYU Press, New York, 2006 Journey in Tears, Zhōu Qínlì, autobiography, (Chow Ching Lie), 1975 In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed, Carl Honore, United States, 2005 Un Barbare en Asie, Henri Michaux, travel diary, Paris, Gallimard, 1933
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Press articles, reviews, essays American Untouchables: Homeless scavengers in San Francisco’s underground economy, “International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy”, Teresa Gowan, Vol. 17 Iss: 3/4, pp. 159-190, (1997) Desis 09: Social innovation at the grassroots: Design tools for the sustainable lifestyles in Wuxi - Xian Zhang & Salil Sayed, Cumulus Proceedings - Young Creators For Better City & Better Life, edited by Lou Yongqi and Zhu Xiaocun, 2010 (essay) Quand le déchet devient ressource, Nicolas Le Nocher, Nantes, 2012 (end of study thesis) Consommation de masse, le nouveau visage du consommateur shanghaien, Ugo di Mauro, Shanghai, 2013 (end of study thesis) The Paradox of Sustainability in China, Manon Dupouy, Shanghai, 2012 (end of study thesis) Waste Land, TimeOut Shanghai, November 2013, pp. 20-21
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Movies Interior Design, (Tokyo!) short film, by Michel Gondry, 2008 Fight Club, movie by David Fincher based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, United States, 1999 The Story of Stuff, short film (21 min) by Annie Leonard and Louis Fox, United States, 2007 Ilha das Flores, short film (12 min) by Jorge Furtado, Brazil, 1989 Wasteland, documentary film, by Lucy Walker, Brazil, 2010
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Webography “Overconsumption is costing us the earth and human happiness”, Celia Cole, June 21, 2010 http://www.theguardian.com/ “The Story of Stuff Project” http://storyofstuff.org/ “Dump Trash, Add Scavengers, Mix and Get a Big Mess”, Howard W. French, April 3, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/ “Wasteland How a film about junk is making the world a better place”, Daniel Bean, July 15, 2011 https://danielbeanfilms.wordpress.com/ “Global Alliance of Waste Pickers” http://globalrec.org/ “Why so many elderly Chinese people become Trash Pickers”, James Griffiths, July 16, 2014 http://www.nbcnews.com/ “Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing” http://wiego.org/
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere thankfulness to Melka Rivé Miao and her husband Miao GuoQing, for transmitting me their precious knowledge about recycling practices in Shanghai and China; Fausino, for having shared with me his unique point of view on the current situation of recycling and DIY behaviors in China; Jean-Marie Le Sueur for giving me insights on this gray economy and its evolution in Shanghai; Christine and Nicolas Ajacques for their support and the absorbing discussions we had on this topic; Claire Rechatin and Nathalie Salomon, whom I was pleased to discuss with about our researches on informal waste pickers in Shanghai;
Karolina Pawlik, for advising me along the writing of this thesis; special thanks to Aude Hazard, Mathieu Bernard and the China studio; Maëlle Cabio’ch and Adèle Poirier, for their help, funny advices and bright jokes while we were too tired to think properly; my family, who supported me all along my studies; and Boris Decan de Chatouville, for bringing me such a strong support during these two years of Master’s degree and heartening me during my projects, giving me his help and smart advices.
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