On March 24, 2022, Zhou Jinfeng, Deputy Chairman of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), Yang Changjiang, advisor of "Plastic Reduction & Pickup" working group of CBCGDF and members of the international department had a discussion on "plastic pollution control" in Beijing.

The meeting focused on the topic of "zero waste community". Zhou Jinfeng put forward some suggestions on how to effectively reduce the carbon emission and the waste per capita of the community:

1、 Build canteens in the community

People's pace of life is speeding up and many intend to order takeout to save time. If a convenient canteen is set up in the community, plastic pollution from takeout packaging will be reduced on a large scale. I think one of the most important indicators of "Zero waste community" is the waste per capita, which is also a key

measure of plastic pollution.

2、 Establish maintenance points in the community

In addition to building canteens, maintenance points should be established. Once my belt was broken on a business trip, instead of throwing it away, I brought it back for repair. In the following years, I repaired it again and again up to three times. If I had thrown away every broken belt and bought new ones, I would have generated 4 belts of garbage. Repairing daily necessities used to be not very complicated. When I was a child, there were watchmakers and shoemakers at the gate of shopping malls. Now these people are gone. It is really difficult to do the repairing by myself because of the lack of professional tools. Therefore, if the community has a simple maintenance center, the amount of garbage will be effectively reduced. Actually, many items in life, if they can be repaired and reused, the results will be very different.

3、 There should be pickers in the community

In my neighborhood, there used to pickers---unconventional waste disposal personnel, who would come to serve the community every day. Cartons, newspapers and plastic bottles are piled up on their tricycles.

Now that the pickers are gone and we are implementing garbage sortingout However, the results are not quite good. Our community is like this: the staff will simply pick clean cartons and throw the rest aside, which will greatly reduce the garbage recycling rate. In fact, these unconventional waste disposal personnel can effectively collect and recycle waste and turn it into new energy with great efficiency. They are contributing to the healthy and sustainable development of our life. I suggest they should be allowed to serve the community again with proper security measures and provided with more support in equipment and so on,

4、 Set up clothes recycling bins in the community

With the improvement of our living standards and the strong promotion of industrial civilization, we can see a lot of clothing excessively bought , which leads to huge

output source of garbage. In fact, the clothes recycling bins in the community can actually recycle a large number of worn clothes. They will then be sorted and turned into fibers for reproduction. But at present, there are also many difficulties. In many communities, it is accused that the processing after recycling is lagging behind. In fact, these clothes have been properly handled as some are donated and others are used for reproduction. At a deeper level, the fact that the waste clothes are not turned into waste, and taxpayers' money is not used to dispose of this part of waste is an economic public welfare and charity behavior.

When we try to achieve the goal of "zero waste community", I think the above points must be taken into account. Reduced waste per capita leads to reduced total carbon emissions. How to reduce the waste per capita needs to be discussed in depth and in detail. Whether you use clean energy to generate electricity or fossil energy, there will be carbon emissions in the end. If we cannot reduce resource consumption from the source, it is the most direct trampling on resources.

Original Chinese Article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Ce_HNG3ffTqy-r93-jmUkg

Translator: Sara

Editor: Lucy

Contact: v10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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