Latest Articles by Huo Weiya

The new face of youth activism in China

Weiya Huo — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:38:00 +0000

Global warming is now emerging as a focus for green NGOs in China, and student groups are leading the way. A new network is helping to link young people together to take action on climate, says Huo Weiya.

Go to any meeting in China about the country's environmental situation and you will notice an increasing number of young adults in attendance. At China's recent Environmental NGO Sustainable Development Conference, almost 100 members of youth environmental groups took part, and they had their own dedicated forum. In fact, China’s youth have become an essential force in the country’s environmental movement.

This year, with climate change the increasing focus of widespread debate, the country's young people have started to act by founding China’s first young people's network focused on global warming, China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN), which incorporates seven separate organisations.

It started in August with a group of 10 young people concerned about China’s environment – mainly heads of student green groups and other youth organisations – who met at a farewell dinner for a foreign student. After a lively discussion about China’s climate-adaptation policies, the state of university green organisations, student climate-change activism overseas and technological issues, they decided that isolated action lacked impact – and a network would be beneficial.

They started making plans immediately, and declared the date of the meal to be CYCAN’s birthday. The network made its public debut on October 28-29, when it organised training sessions on climate change for officials from campus green groups; 13 took part from Beijing and 21 from groups elsewhere in the country.

Lack of funds meant that the first day of training was held in a building under renovation at Peking University. This is nothing new; funding has always been a problem for Chinese student green groups. The training covered basic global warming issues, the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, as well as how China’s youth should act and cooperate on climate-change issues.

To coincide with the UN-led climate talks in Bali, CYCAN is holding large-scale events to show the determination and action of China’s youth around the nation. The group's long-term aim is to increase the involvement of China’s youth groups in climate-change issues, and to organise events.

Youth activism can not be separated from the Chinese government’s own stance on climate change. Since China unveiled its national climate-change programme in June, it has begun to play an active role in solving a global problem. This plan stimulated Chinese young people, who believe they should use their determination, resources and experience to be a part of the solution. Without this background, CYCAN could not have come into being.

But in a sense, CYCAN is just a network for action – not a structured organisation. Its aims and beliefs come from its member organisations. For instance, the Peking University CDM Club is one of CYCAN’s founding organisations. Its members are all students at Peking University who are familiar with climate-change issues and policies. Some of its former members now work implementing Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in their places of work, and many of them played an active role in the October training sessions.

Another member group, the China Green Student Forum, was established 11 years ago. In 2007, it partnered with China Mining University’s Roots & Shoots group to audit energy use on Chinsese campuses, with help from the energy-saving firm Topenergy. In the process, they acquired first-hand information on energy usage at China's universities.

Before CYCAN, China’s student green groups were taking action on climate change, but they were limited to their campuses and had little impact outside their universities. The majority of their activities also lacked innovation. Consolidating resources from around the country means those concerned about global warming can hold bigger, better and more innovative events.

Although climate change is attracting increasing attention around the world – and many countries are implementing policies to reduce its effects – discussion and activism related to global warming has only just started among Chinese NGOs. The attitudes of young people, therefore, are particularly important.

In recent years, China’s youth environmental groups are increasing their focus on climate change and to starting to take action. It is too early to say if they can make their voices heard, we must wait and see. But environmental issues need widespread participation, particularly from young people, in the future.

Huo Weiya is editorial assistant for chinadialogue in Beijing and the former editor-in-chief of China Green Student Forum

The high cost of low carbon

Weiya Huo — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:54:00 +0000

Many people in China want to live more environmentally friendly lifestyles. But reducing carbon footprints can be expensive, writes Huo Weiya, and support for the effort is lacking.

One of my chinadialogue colleagues in Beijing recently bought a Philips energy-saving light bulb to replace a standard one. He was happy with his choice. It may have cost 30 yuan (just under US$4.50) – ten times the price of a filament bulb -- but he wanted to save energy as part of his low-carbon lifestyle. And according to the retailer, he would save, in the long run, much more than the 30 yuan he was spending.

Yet only one month later, his expensive light bulb blew, before he had saved even a fraction of the purchase price. Will he stick to his high-cost, low-carbon, lifestyle?

China’s environmental organisations have started to advocate low-carbon lifestyles and the reduction of carbon footprints to help combat climate change. But they have overlooked one fact: in China, low-carbon living comes at a high cost.

It means buying energy-saving bulbs and appliances, and environmentally friendly building materials and daily goods. Cost can no longer be the sole criterion for purchases. An energy-saving and environmentally friendly product is more expensive than a standard alternative – whether it’s a simple light bulb or the house it illuminates. For average consumers, even buying an ordinary home is a huge burden. How can we persuade ordinary people to opt for an energy-saving residence? This is not a trend they can afford to follow; perhaps this fashion is only for the rich.

Most consumers today do not cause huge carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Their responsibility lies not in choosing a low-carbon lifestyle today, but in avoiding a high-carbon life in the future. The principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” – a cornerstone of sustainable development -- can be applied here as well.

In China, low-carbon living still is hampered by a lack of social infrastructure. Even if your salary allows you to make that choice, nobody is there to help you implement it.

Consider energy-saving homes. You need to find out whether or not the developer has used natural materials wherever possible; how effective the insulation is; and what the green credentials of installed equipment are. You can read up a little, but you’ll still be lucky to avoid being baffled by the developers’ marketing. Many so-called energy-saving buildings are nothing of the sort, and some are even more energy-hungry than the average home – as Li Taige warned in his article “Energy-efficient buildings? Not always”, on chinadialogue last August.

And if you buy one of those energy-saving homes, you’ll need to learn about environmentally friendly decoration. Green building materials are more expensive, and companies may substitute cheaper alternatives and skim off the extra profit. You’ll need to choose insulating flooring, windows that make full use of sunlight, water-saving toilets, environmentally friendly paint, and more – and this is hardly your area of expertise, is it?

And then, it’s time to pick up some energy-efficient appliances. In 2005, China implemented a system of energy-efficiency labelling. As of March 1, twenty-one categories of product -- including electric induction cookers and water heaters -- will be required to carry those labels. So this, at least, will simplify the decision-making progress – or at least it will seem to. You may well find that your new washing machine, despite its label, does not actually save any electricity. There is no effective oversight of the labelling system, and some manufacturers are taking advantage, making false claims about their products. You may think you are enjoying a low-carbon life, all the while causing high levels of emissions.

With all these problems, choosing a low-carbon life and investing time and money could still lead to you being cheated by the market. Low-carbon lifestyles now, like the first generation of biofuels, are simply the transfer – or even increase -- of carbon emissions, not their reduction.

My colleague says he will buy energy-saving bulbs again. Very good, but that’s just a 30-yuan bulb. What will he do when it comes to a one-million-yuan home?

Is leading a low-carbon lifestyle too expensive, particularly for ordinary Chinese people? Do you buy environmentally friendly goods and services despite the cost? If not, would you switch to more eco-friendly products and practices if the costs were lower? How important is this lifestyle decision to you?

Let us know on the forum.

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief of Environmental Culture Newsletter, published by China’s Green Student Forum, an environmental NGO established in 1996.

Homepage photo by armisteadbooker

Low-carbon living begins at work

Weiya Huo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:04:00 +0000

Environmental challenges -- including power consumption, electronic waste, radiation, noise and gases -- share our workspaces. It’s time for an office revolution, writes Huo Weiya.

One of the comments on my earlier article for chinadialogue, “The high cost of low carbon”, said that while low-carbon living is expensive for individuals, low-carbon working for organisations – companies, social groups, government – is more feasible and worthy of consideration.

I agree. Unlike individuals, the actions of government, companies and universities enjoy efficiencies of scale, providing a larger environmental benefit for a lower cost than individuals can hope to match. This is, therefore, a more affordable and practical approach.

The most promising area in which to make changes is office working. Office productivity already has rocketed thanks to the introduction of information technology (IT). This revolution has been characterised by cuts in paper use, which also are used to show the organisation’s environmental credentials. This year Chinese National People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) handed out 2,500 laptop computers to delegates, saving huge quantities of paper. Many people regarded this as a pro-environment move.

Paperless working is good for the environment – it reduces the felling of trees and the pollution created by papermaking. But it also brings new issues. IT products increase energy consumption, become sources of office pollution and ultimately become electronic waste.

At a forum on energy saving and emissions reduction in the IT field held in April 2008, Zhang Xiaochong, head of the National Development and Reform Commission’s International Cooperation Center, said that every year the Chinese government spends 80 billion yuan – US$11.7 billion -- on energy consumption, 50% of which is used to power IT products. In recent years, the energy consumed by IT products has been rising by 8% to 10% annually. It is estimated that in 2007 IT products in China used between 30 billion and 50 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity – nearly as much as the Three Gorges Dam produced.

Figures from Greenpeace International’s website put annual production of electronic waste at between 20 million and 50 million tonnes. The discarding of items such as computers and printers in China is at an all-time high, and cannot be ignored. According to experts, says China Daily, Beijing will produce 158,300 tonnes of electronic waste in 2010. And although the Basel Convention, which attempts to control and punish the cross-border movement of dangerous waste, came into effect in 1992, huge quantities of electronic waste still are being imported illegally into China.

On a visit to Guiyu, a town in Guangzhou known worldwide for this trade, I saw that the bulk of the products being processed were from overseas, with domestic waste already “dealt with” and left around the processing sites. The processing itself is extremely primitive, with removal of useful or metal parts resulting in lead, mercury and cadmium pollution – a major threat to the local environment and human health.

Besides issues of power consumption and electronic waste, IT products also create pollution within the office – radiation, noise and waste gases. These impact on employees’ health and are of no benefit to productivity.

We need an office revolution to combat these environmental challenges. Green offices will retain or improve on current levels of productivity, but use less energy and create less pollution.

Many manufacturers already are using the “green office” concept as a selling point for their products. Some organisations are setting themselves goals for environmentally friendly office working, despite there being no actual professional standards set for this new idea.

At the start of the year, Dell China announced it was to assist the Beijing Energy Saving and Environmental Protection Center in minimising the energy and space usage of its data center by upgrading equipment, using high-density design and virtualisation technology. Shell’s handbook entitled “The Challenges of Energy Saving in the Workplace” calls for the use of teleconferencing, public transport and car sharing to reduce work-related greenhouse-gas emissions.

In November 2008, the Beijing office of the global youth network Roots and Shoots held a green office evaluation event, with the consultancy group Environmental Resources Management (ERM) arranging for Chinese students to visit offices, survey employees and interview managers. They evaluated lighting, heating and cooling, office equipment, greenery and employee behaviour in a number of companies and other organisations. The students then produced reports and suggestions, and will conduct follow-up visits in a year. (Roots and Shoots in Shanghai has evaluated 120 offices; so far, the Beijing office has covered 17.)

On March 19, the project examined Cisco Systems’ Beijing office. Project coordinator Guo Tingting was impressed by the company’s use of distance working. According to a report from the Beijing statistics bureau, the capital’s inhabitants spend an average of 70 minutes every day travelling to work. Distance working saves time for employees, reduces traffic emissions and cuts a company’s office expenses.

Asked if any companies were outsourcing maintenance of office equipment to specialised firms, or simply leasing rather than purchasing their office equipment, Guo said only two or three were outsourcing. Many were not aware that it was an option, believing that companies had to own their own equipment.

Actually, many companies do now rent equipment and management services from external providers. This increases utilisation of the equipment and reduces the number of products needed.

I also have noted that some of the 17 organisations surveyed in Beijing are in the environmental industry, and so already are concerned with “green working”. And, interestingly, it was agreed that the results of the evaluations would not be published.

Office working practices will change out of a sense of social responsibility or a desire to cut costs. But without public demands, this will be done quietly. Relying on voluntary changes will not be adequate – the government should set green working standards, covering energy use, indoor waste gas, noise, radiation and the handling of electronic waste. Policy can be used to change office culture and promote a new office revolution, with the market ultimately providing the necessary services.

Roots and Shoots is set to launch its project worldwide when the time is right. Innovation by environmental NGOs already is sending a positive signal. Rather than making “secret”, or quiet, changes, the government should make green working a matter of policy -- and promote a second office revolution.

What do you think about low-carbon offices? What can be done about the energy consumption costs of electronic equipment? How should electronic waste, pollution and potential health issues be addressed? Can an office really be paperless? Would you work at home if you could? What green working standards would you like to see?

Share your thoughts and experiences on the forum.

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief of Environmental Culture Newsletter, published by Green Student Forum, an environmental NGO established in 1996.

Homepage photo by ♥ Jaye

Go green, in death as in life

Weiya Huo — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:02:00 +0000

China is advocating environmentally friendly funerals, but most people still prefer traditional burial ceremonies. Cultural change cannot be forced, writes Huo Weiya, but awareness can be raised.

A new type of funeral – the “ecological funeral” – is being advocated by China’s government and media, with suitable memorial parks established in many areas.

Ecological funerals refer to new “tree funerals”, “flower funerals”, “grass funerals” and “water funerals”. In the first three types, the ashes of the deceased person are spread on earth in which trees, flowers or grass is planted. In water funerals, the ashes are scattered over a river or the sea.

Such funerals represent China’s second reform of funeral customs. In the first reform, cremation replaced burials. Now the ashes are not retained, but are returned to nature.

Traditionally, burial was the main form of funeral in China. But in 1956, 151 senior officials -- including Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, signed a document calling for the use of cremation. In 1985 the State Council published regulations stipulating that cremation should be carried out in areas that are densely populated or lacking in arable land, with punishments for public officials who did not comply. Cremation then became the most common form of funeral, with the deceased’s ashes stored in one form of memorial or another.

In China, 100,000 mu of land – nearly 70 square kilometres -- are used every year for those memorials, along with large quantities of bricks, concrete and marble. And these figures are expanding. The land used is not replaced, and we are faced with the dead and the living competing for space.

The ashes of Zhou Enlai were scattered in the air over Beijing, the Miyun reservoir and the Hai and Yellow Rivers in 1976. Deng Xiaoping’s ashes were scattered over the sea in 1997. Both of these ceremonies can be considered water funerals.

In many ways, these ecological funerals meet the needs of the times, especially in our cities. The Chinese population is getting older faster, and there is a shortage of land, so there is a risk of having nowhere to build traditional cemeteries. With the Chinese tradition of lavish funeral ceremonies, burial costs are spiralling. In some cases, a funeral can cost more than a house, and people speak of being able to afford to live, but not to die. A recent case exposed by China Central Television (CCTV) -- of a village official in Guangdong who felled 24 mu (16,000 square metres) of forest to create a luxury cemetery -- highlights the environmental dangers of these traditions.

Ecological funerals use little or no land. What they do use is not covered with a gravestone, but with plants. As it happens, China’s Tomb-Sweeping Festival – when relatives of the deceased visit and maintain graves and memorials -- fell in April, just as plants are growing and flowering. Memorial parks will double as green spaces.

Popularising this practice would save both costs and land, and increase the amount of green space.

Despite all this, however, many media reports published after this year’s Tomb-Sweeping Festival showed that only a minority of people choose ecological funerals.

The Chinese people traditionally plant trees beside graves, particularly in rural areas. The tree is believed to host the spirit of the departed, and the death of one of these trees is seen as a bad omen. The same worries are expressed about tree, flower and grass funerals. There is even less acceptance of water funerals. Many people feel that there is nowhere for the bereaved to focus their grief.

“The old burial practices have existed for thousands of years. You can’t replace them overnight,” says Zhu Huamin, head of the Shanghai Burial Culture Institute. “I think for some time to come, ecological funerals will only be accepted by some people.”

Attachment to the idea of traditional funerals is the greatest current obstacle to ecological funerals in China. Despite the earlier reforms, cremation still is not accepted in rural areas, and 50% of Chinese funerals involve burial. The success or failure of this second round of reform rests on changing those deep-rooted cultural beliefs.

The government has no specific regulations on ecological funerals. In April the Legal Daily reported that the drafting of the Funeral Management Regulations, first published in 2007, is due to be completed this year. According to Di Yingqi, a representative in the National People’s Congress, the draft doesn’t mention ecological funerals.

In order to meet targets during the earlier reforms, local governments attempted to make cremation compulsory, but to little effect. Burials took place in secret, and corruption resulted, especially in rural areas. Di argues that a funeral law should be drafted, providing for a range of funeral styles.

Both the current financial crisis and China’s long-standing sustainable development strategy require a shift to the environmentally friendly in the economic, social and cultural sectors. Funeral practices are no different, but using legal and administrative measures to do so will have little effect, at best. You cannot force cultural changes. It is not a matter of law and institutions, but of raising environmental awareness among the people. Then will choose more environmentally friendly ways of life – and death -- of their own accord.

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief ofEnvironmental Culture Newsletter, published by Green Student Forum, an environmental NGO established in 1996.

What are your views? Do you support environmentally friendly funerals, or do you prefer traditional burials? Are young people more open to new forms of funeral ceremony? Do concessions to customs need to be made, given the conflicting demands on available land? Let us know on the forum what you think.

Homepage photo by hunangov

The dangers of boosting consumption

Weiya Huo — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:09:00 +0000

China’s government and the domestic market are calling for greater spending. Economic growth may be maintained, writes Huo Weiya, but US-style living may mean we need another two Earths.

To maintain an 8% economic-growth target through the current global financial crisis, the Chinese government has launched an investment stimulus package worth four trillion yuan (US$585 billion) and eased bank-lending restrictions. But another important measure is the increasing of individual consumption.

In 2008, the Chinese government launched “village appliance” schemes nationwide, with subsidies used to increase sales of televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and mobile phones in rural areas. Another two billion yuan (nearly US$300 million) was invested in 2009 in a “new-for-old” policy that will see individuals and businesses sell old appliances back to the state and receive a 10% subsidy on new purchases. Besides this, the automobile market is benefiting from subsidies and tax breaks, and many cities have handed out shopping vouchers to local people.

The export-oriented economy has been hard-hit by the economic turmoil, increasing the government’s determination to make the domestic market the engine of growth. “Increase domestic demand, maintain growth” is seen as the secret to guiding the economy through hard times. But there are dangers hidden in this strategy, and there will be considerable environmental consequences if a long-term approach is not taken.

First, there is the issue of reusing resources. In China, it is not just rubbish that gets buried in landfill; many materials that could be reused also end up there. And once products have been used, they are treated as rubbish and thrown away. Any recycling that takes place is often the result of scrap collectors sifting through rubbish for the more valuable items; the rest goes to scrap or compost.

Increasing amounts of rubbish mean that many cities – including Beijing – are at risk of being surrounded by landfill sites and are turning to power-generating incinerator plants. This is controversial, with environmental bodies saying China should be sorting and recycling its rubbish. But China does not have a system for sorting rubbish.

When explaining the “new-for-old” policy, a National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) spokesperson said that it would see five million appliances replaced, while 90 million of the types of appliances mentioned above would be discarded annually. But the pervasive presence of scrap collectors throughout China’s cities demonstrates that standardised collection and disassembly companies are not yet common. The sector is dominated by small, informal traders, and the environmental consequences of this already have already been covered in our earlier article “Low-carbon living begins at work”.

The authorities released guidance alongside the “village appliances” and “new-for-old” policies, but with the recycling sector just getting started, it is unclear if the measures will be effective and if they will reach out into the rural areas.

In February, the State Council issued Regulations on Recovery Processing of Waste Electrical and Electronic Products, setting out the direction for the sector. But this only comes into effect in 2011. Until then, those small scrap merchants will be the main channel for recycling. They will purchase discarded appliances and then sell them on to companies unable to process them properly or to small, unregistered workshops.

The inadequate processing of waste doesn’t just create pollution; it’s also the cause of significant waste. According to the same State Council spokesperson, the new-for-old policy would see 2.3 million tonnes of resources collected for reuse. But without systems in place, much of that will be treated as garbage.

Another risk is the inflation of consumer expectations. A special feature on a well-known Chinese website, 21cn.com, recently described white-collar workers as the killers of the environment. The white-collar lifestyle involves high levels of consumption, and consumption is the natural enemy of the environment. In a poll on the website, the vast majority of those surveyed said that it is everyone’s duty to protect the environment.

But despite these views, what actually happens is different. From July 1, hotels in the city of Changsha were no longer supplying items such as disposable toothbrushes and single-use tubes of toothpaste for free; they will be charged for. A survey on People.com.cn found 77% of respondents opposed the move, complaining of inconvenience.

These two surveys demonstrate the clash between ideas of consumption and environmental protection. Environmental awareness was non-existent three decades ago. Today, the environment is often the focus of public debate. But the Chinese seem to be becoming ever more like the Americans they so often point fingers at – happy to protect the environment, as long as they don’t need to change their lifestyles.

The “3R” principles of waste-management strategy are “reduce” (to minimise energy and resource use), “reuse” (to use an item more than once), and “recycle” (to process used items into new products). Reduction and recycling have been put into political and economic practice, but reuse -- the concept at the heart of the circular economy – has been given the cold shoulder. Most consumers seem to have left environmental matters to environmental groups. As long as they can afford to, they’ll consume as much as possible that is new.

China is placing more emphasis on its domestic market, with a range of methods applied to increase consumption and boost the economy, thereby making consumption seem ever more natural. With both the government and the market calling for greater spending, will China’s potential consumption be realised?

The Chinese did not use to be heavy consumers, either because they did not have the funds or the lack of a welfare system meant they saved their money for a rainy day. But 30 years of economic growth have given us ample material desires – a lifestyle of keeping up with the rich, keeping up with the Americans, has taken root. As soon as we are able to consume, we do so – no less than the citizens of developed nations do. Economic growth may be maintained, but as the environmentalists warn, we may need another two Earths to meet the new US-style consumption of the Chinese nation.

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief of Environmental Culture Newsletter.

With policy encouragement causing sharp increases in consumption, how should China improve the reuse of resources? What are your views on waste processing? Increased consumption brings environmental dangers, but lower consumption could result in slower economic growth, leading to social problems such as unemployment. So what should be done? Tell us what you think on the forum.

Homepage image by fansile

Sorting the rubbish in Beijing

Weiya Huo — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:58:00 +0000

The Chinese capital’s strategy for dealing with waste is under scrutiny, from residents and experts alike. Huo Weiya investigated the options.

After the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing’s strategy for dealing with waste disposal overtook transport and air quality to become the environmental issue attracting the most media attention and public engagement in the Chinese capital.

In early August, a group of 30 journalists and concerned citizens, organised by the Sohu environment channel, chinadialogue and others, visited the landfill sites at Asuwei and Gao’antun to see how Beijing’s waste is being dealt with.

Opened in 1994, Asuwei was Beijing’s first landfill site. Today it receives 3,800 tonnes of waste every day, more than double its designed capacity of 1,800 tonnes. Construction of an incineration plant is due to start at the end of the year. Since measures to prevent seepage of water from the site have been ineffective, leachate from the site contaminates the groundwater. Media reports have drawn a possible link between this and high illness rates in surrounding residential areas.

In the 1980s, locals at Gao’antun used the site as a dump. In 1995 it became an official landfill site. An incinerator, constructed before the Olympics last year, is still being tested. On August 30, 2008, hundreds of angry residents took to the streets holding placards and wearing masks to protest the stench from the site. The government quickly dealt with the problem of the smell: they covered the site with plastic membrane, sprayed chemical deodorisers and redirected some of the waste to other sites at Asuwei and Beishenshu to reduce the load on the plant.

However, measures such as using plastic membrane – which is easily damaged – and shifting processing to other areas do not solve the root causes of the problem. Although the Asuwei and Beishenshu sites may be further from residential areas, the foul odours still exist, especially at the overloaded Asuwei site. One of the organisers of the Gao’antun protests, Zhao Lei, remains unhappy with the government’s handling of the problem and continues to make representations.

On June 5, 2007, local residents – tormented by the smell from the overloaded Liulitun landfill site in Haidian – protested outside the State Environmental Protection Administration (now the Ministry of Environmental Protection). In July 2009, the Haidian authorities announced that the landfill would close four years early, with an incinerator planned at the same location. But the residents oppose this move, due to the threat of carcinogenic dioxins. Today the fate of the site remains undecided.

According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration, the capital produced an average of 18,400 tonnes of rubbish every day in 2008, a figure that is increasing by 8% a year. It is estimated this will increase to 25,000 tonnes per day in 2012 and 30,000 tons by 2015, by which point all of Beijing’s landfill sites will be full.

Faced with increasing amounts of rubbish, the Beijing government started trying to sort waste in 1996; Global Village, an NGO, ran sorting trials in communities in the capital. But 10 years later, rubbish is still being buried unsorted.

Rubbish bins in Beijing’s public areas are marked with “recyclable” or “non-recyclable”, but everyone knows that it all ends up buried in the same place. The equipment and systems needed for separate transportation and processing of rubbish are not in place. Sorting never caught on.

“We are rapidly adding new facilities,” Wei Panming, deputy director of the facilities department at Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration, recently explained, “but the amount of waste is increasing quickly, too – so there is pressure. We need to use rubbish sorting at source and recycling to reduce quantities by 1% or 2% per year, with zero growth by 2015.” This marks a new round of government promotion of rubbish sorting, but there has not yet been any progress on implementation.

Some NGOs would like to emulate the Japanese example: careful sorting of waste into specific categories as the ultimate goal, with rough sorting to start with. But Zhang Jingzhi, general manager at waste disposal firm Hejia Resources, says there is no need for excessive sorting. “Separating out organic waste such as leftover food is excellent, but everything else can be sorted by machinery at the plant. Why spend so much sorting it out at source?” He also thinks the definitions of “recyclable” and “non-recyclable” are problematic. Most people would not think of a rotten apple as recyclable, he says, “but for me, that rotten apple can be reused. It will make great fertiliser.”

Despite a decade of calls for even simple waste-sorting, China still lacks a clear and workable system. The country’s 600 cities produce almost 150 million tonnes of waste every year; most of these cities have trouble dealing with it.

Many cities, including Beijing, are looking to incinerators as a quick way to reduce landfill. This may be the most controversial method of dealing with rubbish, in Beijing and elsewhere. However, Wei says that there is no technical reason not to build incineration plants in Beijing at European Union standards, and that heavy metal pollution is accumulative: “you do not get poisoned if you just eat a little bit.” NGOs, local residents and some experts do not agree. Incineration, they point out, has often been abandoned overseas. If the make-up of the rubbish is so varied, it may not be suitable for incineration. Can suitable sites be chosen – and will the plants run correctly?

According to the Beijing city government, their aim is to increase waste disposal capacity, adjust the make-up of that capacity and promote reduction of the overall quantity of waste. Wei explains that this adjustment means shifting from a 2:3:5 ratio of incineration, biological processing and landfill in 2012, with no burial of unprocessed urban waste, to a 4:3:3 ratio by 2015.

Says Wei: “Not all rubbish burns. Different types of rubbish will be handled differently, as long as pollution and costs are controlled – and the final results are good.” But the government, businesses and the public have different ideas about what represents a good result, and the public have little faith in expert opinions. The debate over incineration will test the wisdom of all parties.

In any case, incineration in China is on the rise. “It is needed – the country does need to increase the percentage of waste that is incinerated. Over the next year or two we will be building several large waste-to-energy generators,” says Zhang. “The plants either operate under a build-operate-transfer model, with the government subsidising rubbish processing, or a profit model, with subsidy coming from the sale of electricity to the national grid.”

For local governments desperate to find a way of dealing with their rubbish, subsidies from the electricity firms are a way to do it at no cost, simply by licensing a waste-to-energy generator.

“Government franchising of these plants provides a platform for the public and private sectors to cooperate on waste processing, with franchises possible for collection, transportation and processing,” says franchising expert, Xu Zongwei. “Investment is significant and the return period is long. If private firms get involved they need to be clear on the difficulties and risks that may exist.”

However, Fu Tao, deputy chair of the China Environment Service Industry Association, stresses that “handling rubbish is one of the functions of government. It is still a public service. The government can invite others to help, but that does not absolve it of responsibility.”

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief of Environmental Culture Newsletter, published by Green Student Forum, an environmental NGO established in 1996.

Homepage image from Green Sohu

China’s green maverick

Weiya Huo — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:39:00 +0000

Zhang Yue, air-conditioning magnate and one of the country’s best-known businesspeople, wants to put the planet before profits.

Zhang Yue was born in 1960 in Changsha, Hunan province, in southern China. In 1988 he founded Broad Air Conditioning with 30,000 yuan in capital. The private company, of which he is now president, sells a non-electric central air-conditioning system. Broad sells its units to 60 countries, and leads the industrial market in China, Europe and the United States.

In recent years, Broad has developed air-purifying central air-conditioning systems and stand-alone air-purifiers, and has undertaken energy-saving building refurbishments, turnkey central air-conditioning projects, energy-management services for central air-conditioning contracts and renewable fuel services.

Non-electric air-conditioning uses natural gas to heat lithium bromide until it becomes a gas, and then condense the gas back to liquid form, at which point it removes heat from the surrounding environment.

As far as the Chinese media is concerned, Zhang is a maverick. Now in middle-age, he has the long hair of a young artist. As a child he loved art and literature. His company sticks to eight principles: no polluting the environment, no stealing technology, no misleading consumers, no unfair competition, no complex borrowing arrangements, no tax avoidance, no bribery and no immoral practices.

In China’s immature commercial environment, Broad’s ideals, the distance it keeps from government and its commercial ethics, mean growth is bound to be difficult. But Zhang has stubbornly stuck to his own philosophy, focusing on morals, systems, happiness and stability. He admits that he is a perfectionist.

Today, he is applying his philosophy to environmental protection – both in his business operations and in his own personal life. Broad makes its products at facility called “Broad City” in Changsha, which has its own farm that feeds pigs and chickens leftovers from the canteen. Organic fertilisers are used in the fields and there is a fish pond. Zhang believes that only when employees are able to live in an environmentally friendly, energy saving environment that purifies the soul, will they be able to work and live well.

He has also made changes in his life. “My home is pretty big. I didn’t think about it at first, but it needs a lot of air conditioning and heating. So in winter I turn the thermostat down, and in summer I turn it back up. I might make the equipment, but I don’t enjoy it as much as I might like.”

Another interesting part of the story is his love of aeroplanes. Zhang loves to fly: in 1995, he attracted media attention when he bought his first Cessna jet for 70 million yuan, becoming the first Chinese entrepreneur to own his own plane – he later bought another six aircraft. He was also the first businessman to hold a helicopter pilot’s license.

But several years later, Zhang sold three of the planes. The others were leased out or put in hangars, and Zhang ordered that they could only be used for groups of six people or more. On one occasion, the microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus visited Hainan province for a conference, and had planned to visit Broad City. Yunus had hoped to save time by taking a Broad company jet, but Zhang’s rules would not allow it, and the visit was cancelled.

“One day I learned that a tree can absorb 18.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide every year,” says Zhang. “It would take eight trees 60 years to absorb the carbon emitted by my plane during a single return trip between Changsha and Beijing. I was shocked.” Zhang now takes commercial flights, even if means sacrificing something in terms of comfort. “The searches, the waiting, the delays, the hard seats,” he complains.

Besides being president of Broad, Zhang is also vice chair of the United Nations Environment Program Sustainable Buildings & Climate Initiative. Since last October, Broad has been making energy-saving upgrades to 28 office buildings, apartment blocks and hotels at Broad City, with a focus on insulation.

In June, Zhang arranged for the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, to receive a report when he visited Hunan. The document proposed an energy-efficient building programme to combat the financial crisis and address climate change. According to Zhang, the proposal was “entirely for the national interest, not for personal benefit. If anything I would lose out – the air-conditioning market would shrink significantly.”

Zhang often says the future of the planet is more important than his business. “I love air-conditioning,” says Zhang. “But I dream that one day humanity will stop using it. One of my major tasks now is to eliminate it – to eliminate my own business.”

He doesn’t say how he will do this, and many think it is inconceivable or utopian. His actions and ideas have made him a radical even among environmentalists. And his actions are not those that ordinary people can adopt: ordinary Chinese people do not make decisions regarding private jets, large houses or energy-efficient buildings.

However, many entrepreneurs are busy “green washing” their lifestyles and businesses, attracting media exposure for their activities, but not giving up their extravagant and carbon-intensive lifestyles. The majority of businesses still aim to grow at minimum cost; as long as they can get past government checks, they are happy to save money on things like waste-water treatment. This is what makes Zhang something of a beacon in the gloom.

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager at chinadialogue in Beijing.

Homepage image: An aerial view of part of Broad City

Packaging: no gift to the earth

Weiya Huo — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:48:00 +0000

Traditional festivals have lost their cultural significance and become excuses for giving presents that come with too much wrapping, writes Huo Weiya. Such excess is not good for the environment.

Early this year, I attended a China-Europe civil society conference. Before the meeting ended, the European attendees presented their Chinese hosts with a gift – four bars of chocolate. It was, they explained, both fair-trade and organic chocolate.

My companion joked that the Europeans had obviously read up on China’s culture of gift-giving and were seizing an opportunity to follow local customs. And while they may have been doing as the Romans do, it could be worth China’s while to follow suit and examine its own gift-giving practices.

Etiquette has always been a key part of Chinese culture, but over time this has turned into the more materialist habit of gift-giving. China’s traditional festivals have lost their cultural significance and become excuses for giving presents. Mid-Autumn Festival is a prime example. Traditionally, families gathered to eat mooncakes and admire the full moon. Now, it a time for strengthening relationships between leaders, bosses and employees with a well-chosen gift.

But mooncakes – the only appropriate offering at this time of year – are cheap, and gifts should be expensive. So the manufacturers meet consumer needs with “high-added-value” mooncakes. Originally sold unpackaged or in simple paper wrappings, they now come in luxury gift sets.

A Chinese story tells of a man who, hoping to obtain a higher price for some pearls he planned to sell, made a decorative box to keep them in. A buyer admires the box and purchases it, only to return the pearls later, believing them to have been left in the box in error. The same now happens with mooncakes. The purchase is made not for the product, but for the packaging. The food itself may not even taste that good, but the box is impressive.

It was mooncakes that brought the term “excessive packaging” into the public vocabulary, and the issue has cropped up annually these last few years. The relevant government departments act out an offensive every year, issuing notices and examining products on the shelves. There’s a bout of media and public debate about the waste of resources, pollution, unnecessary extravagance and so forth. Everyone is well aware of the problem – but two weeks later it passes and is forgotten.

The back-and-forth plays out every year, but now all kinds of products come in excessive packaging. Wen Zheji is head of the Kaifa Environmental Technology Consulting Centre, a provider of packaging to the food processing and catering industries. He tells of watching clients leaf through various packaging options and asking them what they’re looking for, only to be told: “The most expensive!” Only the costliest of packaging will add to the product’s value.

But the waste produced, bar that which is worth recycling, will end up in landfill. Jin Shi, secretary-general of the International Food Packaging Association (IFPA), explains that “seven or eight different kinds of material are used in packaging, including metals, glass and silk, and that makes it harder to recycle; you can’t put it all through one process”. China still doesn’t have specialised recycling for packaging.

Wang Weiping, an adviser to Beijing’s municipal government, once said in an interview that “packaging restrictions could cut domestic waste by about 17%”. That would be no small contribution to the reduction in waste production that China urgently needs to make.

The government has attempted to address the issue through regulations and standards. In 2005, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) issued a compulsory national mooncake standard to put an end to excess packaging. In September of this year, it published rules for measuring mooncake packaging, so that actual measurements, rather than the judgement of individual officials, would be used to decide whether or not packaging is excessive. And in March, requirements for packaging for food and cosmetics were issued, extended restrictions to two new product types.

While a public hearing on the wider-ranging regulations on restricting excessive product packaging was held in September 2008, AQSIQ official Li Minggang said this July that the regulations were still being “researched”. Management measures for recycling and reuse of packaging were reported to be due for release at the end of last year, but according to Yu Duyuan, senior engineer at the China National Packaging Corporation’s technology centre, “they’re still under approval.”

Li Minggang says that “if we are to solve the issue of excess packaging, we need State Council regulations, departmental rules and, one day, an actual law to provide the basis for enforcement and criteria for manufacturers, distributors and consumers to work to.”

But the annual attacks on packaging and the moves described above are aimed at manufacturers and retailers – and this misses the actual cause of the problem.

How effective can regulation of manufacturing and retail be if market demand remains? There already are two different sets of regulations on moon-cake packaging, and the problem has been tackled nationwide for years. Mooncake packaging was the first to attract attention and debate. But the problem just gets worse.

The excess-packaging issue is, in fact, a test of consumer responsibility. The vast majority of purchases of gift-boxed mooncakes are not for personal consumption. They are to be given as gifts, and it is the package that makes them suitable gifts. The same is done with alcohol and tea – also popular gifts – in order to meet the demand for gifts as a part of strengthening interpersonal relationships.

Gift items are not the only excessively packaged products, but they are the worst offender. To quote a line from Chinese actor and director Feng Xiaogang: “I don’t want the best. I want the most expensive.” As long as this consumption and gift-giving continues, the demand for luxury packaging will remain. The most government measures will achieve is to force the smarter manufacturers to find a way around them.

You can’t solve a problem just by banning certain behaviour; an alternative needs to be provided. A Chinese advertising jingle for a health supplement – “Giving a present? Give health!” – shows that good health is more of a concern now as standards of living rise. That jingle could be applied to excess packaging, but referring not to the health of an individual, but to public consumption, particularly in gift-giving.

The Europeans of the first paragraph made a point of mentioning that their gift was organic and fairly traded. It would have been more expensive than normal products, but it is better for the environment and vulnerable groups.

The Chinese people might not be ready to follow that example. The ideas haven’t taken root and the products simply aren’t on the market. But we can start by being responsible consumers and boycotting excessively packaged products.

(The expert opinions above are drawn mainly from chinadialogue and the Sohu environmental channel’s July Green Choice Forum, “Don’t pick up the bill for excessive packaging”.)

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief of Environmental Culture Newsletter, published by Green Student Forum, an environmental NGO established in 1996.

The problem of excessive packaging has been discussed annually in recent years in China, but never in a sustained manner. The government hopes to tackle the issue through policy changes. What do you think? What should be done? Tell us on our forum . . .

Homepage image from nipic.com

Young China’s long green march

Weiya Huo — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:01:00 +0000

The work of the country’s largest youth environmental movement is only beginning, writes Huo Weiya. Students’ sense of not doing enough provides an impetus to keep going.

“Back when I was in junior high school, the grass in my village would reach up to my chest,” recalls Liu Shitie, a student at Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology. Yang Qian, in her first year at China Women’s University, finds that a bit odd. She’s from the coal-producing province of Shanxi and has never been to the grasslands. “The grass is much shorter now,” Liu explains. “There are very few places you can see it grow that tall, and a lot of places are suffering desertification.”

Liu’s group – with the poetic name of Grassland Strollers – is one of the seven teams that participated in this year’s Green Long March event. The Green Long March is a youth environmentalism event held jointly since 2007 by the US organisation FutureGenerations and Beijing Forestry University. Every year students from nearly 50 Chinese universities campaign and research on a green theme in an environmentally sensitive area.

The events of 2009 drew to a close on October 30. This year – the third in which the Green Long March has been held – saw almost 1,000 students take part in environmental and energy education and research into the use of new energy in Inner Mongolia’s grasslands, the Yangtze and Yellow River basins, and on China’s south-east coast. The results of their work have been published as a collection of articles.

At the closing ceremony, students from 17 provinces presented their findings. The opening discussion of the book was taken from one of the discussions at that ceremony.

In fact, the Grassland Strollers were not actually focusing on the grasslands themselves. They went there to visit a wind farm. The theme of the Green Long March this year is new energy, so each group designed their activities around this topic.

Zhang Zongshuai is a member of Grassland Strollers, and also a student at Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology. He and his colleagues investigated the use of methane, with the details of their research being included a video about the 2009 event. As the video shows, the local villagers are happy to use methane due to government subsidies – for only several hundred yuan then can build a methane generator.

Methane is the only new energy source to have been widely adopted in rural China. So another group, Gold Coast – formed by students from four universities on China’s south-east coast -- also opted to investigate this source of energy. But as one member, Chen Mingwei, noted in his journal, the case they chose to study was a failure. In 2006, the village of Wushi in Guangzhou province set up a methane demonstration project. At the start, 10 households were participating; now, only two or three are still using methane.

The students were aware of this before carrying out the field study, and initially wavered over whether or not to continue. But in the end they went, to find out why it didn’t succeed. As Chen wrote in his summary, it turned out that regulations designed to prevent pollution of a nearby river meant that large numbers of livestock could not be kept in the village. But without livestock, the animal dung to use as methane feedstock was not available, and so households dropped out of the scheme. Hence, not every location is suitable for methane generation – and this needs to be taken into consideration.

In the discussion cited above, Yang Qian mentioned a case she knew of. Her neighbours at home were also using methane, she said, and there was no shortage of the gas – but clearing away the waste sludge was a problem.

Yang Qian and her three companions didn’t actually participate in any of the teams this year. They attended the closing ceremony, as they will be taking part in next year’s Green Long March. Three students from Hong Kong University came for the same reason, and have already planned their activities for 2010.

The participation of students from almost 50 universities and the publicity generated means the Green Long March is China’s largest youth environmental movement. It is attracting increasing numbers of young people to get involved, learn about the environment through research, and spread knowledge. This is something new when compared with the Chinese youth environmental movement that started in the mid-1990s.

One of the organisers, FutureGenerations, is an environmental NGO founded in the United States. As an overseas group, its role in the Green Long March is fund-raising, expert guidance and communication with sponsors. Its cooperation with Beijing Forestry University differs from the usual form of youth environmental movements in China.

In the past, when Chinese students got involved with the environmental movement there wasn’t much active guidance or support from their universities; it tended to be the students themselves getting together. There was only so much they could do. Support from the universities or official organisations was rare, so their fund-raising ability was limited and activities were simple and run on a shoestring.

But if a university itself organises activities in its own name, it becomes easy to work with government and businesses – and that’s the strength of the Green Long March.

Its sponsors are also different, in not just providing financial support. The Grassland Strollers were able to get access to the wind farm thanks to help from their sponsor, turbine manufacturer Suzlon. Employee volunteers at Swire Pacific participated in the entire process of Gold Coast’s activities, helping them in making preparations, optimising questionnaires to make them more targeted, and so on. Exposure to these professional attitudes towards standards, rigour and attention to detail meant the students learned about more than just the environment.

But the grassroots nature of earlier movements does have one advantage – more freedom, and so no curbs from the university or even government. The Green Long March is at a disadvantage here, as China’s universities are political in nature and sensitive topics – which environmental matters sometimes are – cannot be touched upon. Operations can also be limited in terms of efficiency.

A major part of China’s youth environmental movement has always been students carrying out environmental education on campus, in communities and even in rural areas. This type of activity is easy to conduct and requires little if any funding or capability; with just simple training, individuals and groups can carry out environmental education work. Environmental groups at Chinese universities are still doing this.

But many people doubt the efficacy of these events. Spending a few hours in a community and then leaving – do these one-off events actually do much good? Evaluations always talk about how many people were influenced – but were they? These questions remain.

The participants in the Green Long March had the same doubts. Liu Shitie says that publicity alone isn’t enough. Issues need to be followed up in a sustained manner. Many participants in this year’s research had the same feeling.

A FutureGenerations project coordinator, Clay Baylor, told me that “the Inner Mongolian team felt that methane use is worth expanding in villages, and they hope to do more on that – not just research.”

So Green Long March has been making changes over the last two years, including a new “Green Seed Awards” designed just for those students who think they’re not yet doing enough. The prize requires students to carry out initial research in a community and use the information gathered to design a project. The winning project will get a small amount of funding for implementation. Twenty-five awards were made this year.

The students’ sense of not doing enough indicates that there is plenty more to do – and this is the impetus to keep going. The Green Long March of China’s youth has just started.

Huo Weiya is operations and development manager for chinadialogue in Beijing and former editor-in-chief of Environmental Culture Newsletter, published by Green Student Forum, an environmental NGO established in 1996.

Homepage image from FutureGenerations

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