CLOSED–LOOP INNOVATORS

In every Chinese city, an army of motorcycles and mopeds weaves through the traffic jams, and sometimes even venturing on sidewalks, to deliver millions of food and e-commerce orders each day. During 2019 alone the 63.25 billion e-commerce packages delivered a plastic waste punch of 280,000 tons, equal to the weight of about 23 school buses.

With growing grassroots activism around plastic, Plastic Free China was established in 2018 to focus solely on single-use plastic reduction through corporate campaigns to change business practices and consumer behaviors. Led by CEO and co-founder Zheng Xue and project officer Sherry Lu, Plastic Free China has proposed policy changes on express delivery regulation, co-authored reports on e-commerce and food delivery waste with Greenpeace East Asia, and worked with WWF China’s No Plastic in Nature Action Network.

The program began with the publication of a report evaluating and ranking the package reduction efforts of express delivery companies to create motivation for packaging reduction. Next they started educating consumers to identify whether the package they receive is over-packaged and engage them to put pressure on companies. Their recent success has advanced the reduction of single-use plastics in express delivery. They are also trying to inform people about the harm of biodegradable plastic, which will likely go to the incinerator or a landfill.

Plastic Free China also launched online public awareness campaigns to teach consumers on the severity of the single-use cutlery and the take-out food packaging problems. Engaging the public on Weibo, WeChat, and other social media platforms, they promote discussion and education about plastic waste issues. Through these efforts, the Plastic Free China team has played a vital role in sparking citizens and other NGOs to join forces to reduce plastic pollution.

Growing up in Xicai Village in rural Hebei Province, Chen Liwen spent plenty of her childhood outdoors, where she established a deep connection with nature. This connection eventually led her to pursue an environmental career. Early on, while she was surveying landfills outside Beijing, she discovered “mountains” of putrid waste that were leaking into waterways and sickening nearby residents. That incident sparked her to focus her work on reducing waste and waste pollution. After working on urban waste issues Liwen became concerned that pollution reforms to promote waste sorting and recycling in cities were not extended to rural areas, where 40 percent of China’s population lives.

In 2017, Chen Liwen founded Zero Waste Village, a group that has already helped more than 24 villages and five townships set up waste sorting programs.

Laishui County, Hebei Province was their first village. The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation was building a new rural tourism project in the county and better waste management was important to keep the area attractive for visitors. The first pilot was a complete experiment without much financial support.

The Zero Waste Village team even bought trash cans and hardware themselves and spent the first two weeks going door-to-door to teach the villagers how to incorporate waste sorting into their routine.

They learned that their “do it all” training approach was not sustainable. Instead they shifted to training and mobilizing local people to lead this waste work. They found village committees the best leaders because they hold the administrative power in rural areas. Today, Chen is shifting her group’s focus to townships as the local governments can spread good waste practices to surrounding villages in their area. Working more at the township level has helped overcome the limitations with some village committees that often lack a strong systematic governance structure.

“We will continue educating others about rural waste sorting. Each year we hope to build new partnerships”