Where does Shanghai’s Garbage Go?

May 20, 2013– Roots & Shoots’ newest Recycling program has just concluded this year’s trips to Shanghai’s various waste management sites.  On May 10^th and 17^th, and on an earlier trip in January, eager groups of high school and middle school students discovered exactly where there garbage travels to after it goes into the bin.  Each trip covered three out of four partner sites, including a tour to one of Shanghai’s two landfills, an incinerator, composting facility, and/or and an E-waste site.  Science classes and Roots & Shoots members from several schools bravely followed us to the top of a mountain of garbage, through a water-treatment facility, along corridors of men and women composting and sorting electronics, and then to watch a giant claw sort trash for a blazing fire.

While these trips are still in their infancy and have proven surprising at times, our facility partners seemed quite happy to teach the enthusiastic kids, and the students in turn were lined-up with lots of fantastic questions about logistics and processes.  The visit was a very explicit view of how much garbage Shanghai creates, and the importance of sorting and recycling, rather than further filling the city’s already over-worked garbage plants.  Each trip was as fragrant as the next, but each time the students and teachers persevered to learn about the inner-workings of how our garbage is returned to the earth.

This is the second year Roots & Shoots has conducted trips to waste facilities in Shanghai.  The new Recycling program is sponsored by Pudong’s Environmental Protection Bureau as an initial phase in introducing the schools to their new recycling system before it is rolled-out in the larger community.  We are facilitating these waste management trips to foster in them a greater responsibility for their actions, and to create awareness for the necessity of proper waste management.

To get involved or find out more about our recycling program, please e-mail info@jgi-shanghai.org