Tag: solid waste disposal

Battery Recycling

October 13, 2010 / / 0 Comments

This is the first public battery recycling point I’ve seen in China – and guess which city it was in?

Not Beijing, not Shanghai, but…beautiful Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, home of spicy and numbing food!

The dark side of this story is that Chengdu apparently doesn’t have the technology and resources to actually recycle these batteries, so they are being stored in warehouse purgatory, patiently awaiting a day in the future when they can be reincarnated or perhaps reach battery nirvana.

Similar problems plague battery collection programs in Tianjin and Beijing, as well as collection programs for other toxic products such as CFLs.   If you know of any economically viable recycling technologies that can be brought over to China, please leave me a comment or send an email.  We’ll make millions!

Drowning in garbage

August 23, 2010 / / 8 Comments

Taking the train in China is a relatively cheap, convenient, and low-carbon way to travel.  One oddly enjoyable part of train travel is shopping for snacks before the trip so you don’t have to buy the expensive and unappetizing train food.  This is the one time that I have no qualms about eating instant noodles and processed, packaged snacks.  In preparation for the 18-hour (actually, 20-hour due to delays) train ride from Shanghai to Shenzhen,  I bought a seemingly harmless package of dried seaweed.  When I spotted it in the grocery store, memories of childhood flooded into my mind – the puckering feeling of the salty, dried seaweed as it touched my tongue, the flood of flavor as it melted onto the roof of my mouth, the spiciness that lingered on my lips after the seaweed had disappeared into my belly – and I had to have it:

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Treasure-making garbage can follow-up

April 15, 2010 / / 3 Comments

Thanks again to everybody who submitted comments to my previous post about the mobile bio-chemical processing machine.

I enjoyed reading your comments, and it’s nice to know that I actually have 6 loyal readers, not just 2.

Though all of your answers were worthy of a good kick in the teeth, I can only pick one lucky person whom I will treat to a delicious Peking duck dinner, complete with numerous awkward silences, inappropriate comments, and puzzling facial expressions.

And the winner is….. Continue reading