Translator: Ashley Wu Reviewer: Leonard Ryunosuke
Hello everybody. I’ll introduce myself career-wise.
I’m Xuesong Liu, a waste collector.
I am very glad to share a story with you
about recycling beverage bottles
as a sustainable lifestyle.
First, let me talk about my career path.
I’ve spent 15 years in the lifestyle fashion industry in Japan
It started in 2010, when my four-year-old son
couldn’t breathe or sleep at night because of a nose disease,
so he had to get a surgery.
When we arrived at the hospital,
I saw many children waiting in line for the surgery.
So I asked the doctor,
“Why do such young kids
have so many problems with their nose and respiratory tracts?”
The doctor said, “It’s due to the haze, air pollution,
and food safety problems.”
That’s why children nowadays are having so many problems
with their nose and respiratory tracts.
When I watched my son walk into the surgery room
that I wasn’t allowed to enter,
I saw him constantly turning back and crying aloud through the window.
At that moment, I realized that
that one day, he would have to face the world alone.
I can’t guarantee his lifetime wellness,
no matter how much wealth or property I leave behind for him.
Then I should do something good for the environment
to set my mind at rest, and create a better environment
for more children.
So I entered the used beverage bottle recycling industry
in 2010.
This is my 11th year working in this industry.
I’ve been to more than 100 waste yards in and around the Beijing area,
and I’ve heard too many stories surrounding
dirty waste yards and garbage.
I’ve done a relatively large-scale survey in Japan and Beijing
about the relationship between
our happiness index and the environment.
I also would like to do this survey with the audience today
The 1st question is: are you happy?
“Yes,”
86% of respondents answered.
The 2nd question: do you think Mother Earth
would be happy if she could feel emotions?
No way. 92% of respondents answered “No”.
The 3rd question: would a worsening environment
affect your happiness?
100% of respondents answered “Yes, it would”.
The 4th question:
if you understand the above statements,
have you done anything environmentally harmful in your daily life?
For example, you might be wasting resources or
not be doing your recycling properly.
“Yes,” 85% of respondents said.
That is who we are as the people of Earth.
We completely understand the principles but find it difficult to change our ways.
Next, I’d like to share a Japanese story with you
from my almost decade-long life in Japan.
There was a warship island in Japan.
In the early 1950s, a large number of high-quality
coal mines was found there.
It was during that time that people from all over Japan
came there in swarms, making a living off coal mining.
That island used to have the highest per capita income in the world.
People who went to the island
built a lot of high buildings and large mansions.
However, the mine was drained by the late 1970s, and
after people left the island, this place became what’s shown here
Sometimes I feel it like a reflection of the entire earth.
Currently, humans are sucking discovered resources dry.
We are leaving garbage behind for future generations.
Garbage pollution is also severe in rural areas.
We’ve seen how garbage pollution has
resulted in the loss of local scenery.
I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of data on plastic garbage pollution.
For example, we are producing 500 billion plastic bags annually.
and on average, a plastic bag is only used for 15 minutes.
which means that in just 15 mins we deplete oil resources
generated over hundreds of millions of years on earth.
Marine animals are affected as well.
Millions of marine animals are killed by human plastic waste annually.
We also have to accept the dangers of microbeads.
Based on research data from China,
30% of plastic is being recycled. But in reality,
the proportion of recycled plastic is lower than 30%.
Most of it is buried, burned, or thrown away instead.
That is what I learned from this industry and visiting many wastelands.
In fact, the most serious problem with garbage sorting in China
is the secondary pollution.
Take plastic bottles as an example. When we throw away plastic bottles
or sell them to salvage stations,
most bottles will be smashed at small workshops.
After the smashing and industrial alkali washing,
the wastewater will be let out directly,
which seriously affects groundwater sources,
especially our drinking water and soil. Though we utilize the resources partially,
the resulting secondary pollution makes it a greater loss than gain.
Of course, with stronger environmental oversight,
such occurrences are becoming more infrequent.
But the process --
this process took us a long time.
This is what I saw when visiting the wastelands around Beijing.
I took these photos in 2010.
Many of the photos are the same.
I felt especially terrible to see so many children living there, in such a place.
Those workers, coming from areas other than Beijing, went there
without an education, money, or skills, had to make a living off of garbage.
So the children at those wastelands would scrape beverage bottles.
After scraping 40 thousand bottles,
which weighed one ton, they would be paid 370 yuan (~ 55 USD).
I felt terrible seeing that because I joined this industry for children.
We wondered what we could do for the children,
so we took them for an annual health examination.
But honestly, this industry is too difficult
without knowledge and techniques.
The gross margin of selling raw materials
and recycling beverage bottles is too small.
The company didn’t have much money either so we stopped sponsoring examinations
for these kids after 3 or 4 years.
It was an unsustainable, welfare practice.
So I was thinking about how to tackle the problem within this industry
and make it more profitable, so that
the parents of these children could live a decent life.
I have been thinking every day about how we can have young people participate
in this garbage sorting and resource recycling industry with the elders we see
collecting garbage every day. How can we achieve that?
Back in March 2019, I wanted to bring fashion and branding into this
dirty and disorderly industry that was without dignity or happiness,
which was something I’d started in 2018.
Though I have left the fashion industry for a long time,
it’s probably my destiny. Since there’s no fashion business willing
to work on waste recycling for 10 years
People from the waste recycling industry also
have no opportunity to enter the fashion industry,
so how can we combine those two? One approach is
to run a sustainable, profitable model
and attract more talents, those young, innovative talents into joining this
industry by margin profits from fashion and brands.
while providing decent jobs to the children’s parents,
to provide a better environment for the children to grow.
Each of our products started a national trend
of environmental protection, creating a brand.
They are made from the fragmented strands of weaving cloth,
which require processing at least twelve times to be made into the final product.
It was the efforts of many that created the recycled, final product.
Meanwhile, every one of our products has a QR code that traces its origins
and its development. With respect for this resource and
to prevent secondary pollution,
we have also adhered to international recycling
and quality standards to create these products.
Our teamwork is also from top to bottom, including the recycling team,
which created an ecosphere that will soon establish a non-governmental organization
to improve this industry. Since I’ve joined this industry,
my team and I have recycled
two billion drink bottles.
We had 60 million drink bottles sent to channels for safe handling
through the Internet of Things, giving 13.18 billion bottles higher value.
I was honored to be invited as the Chinese representative to
the 73rd United Nations General Assembly. I was also representing Asia
to share China’s handling of plastic waste pollution. How did we do it?
How did we interact with Chinese youth and make it a socially influential issue?
So it was a great honor that I had opportunities like this.
We hope to come up with more models and standards
based on the last dozen years of application.
Combining the traditional value of respecting nature and its resources
in Chinese culture and the continuous intersection of our practice and
different industries, we’ll be able to come up with sustainable lifestyles
representing China and how we, the environment, and its resources
can be complementary, coexist, and develop in harmony.
Can we bring it into the entire industry, society, or maybe even the entire world?
That is the responsibility and purpose of a major nation.
Because historically, we have had rich knowledge and experience
in leading sustainable lifestyles. So now, I’ll take the chance to ask
the audience members here to start from conserving a piece of paper
and recycling a drink bottle
to increase the usage period of products that aren’t easily bought.
We can start from buying recyclable products as much as possible
and every small habit and lifestyle
to practice and advocate for sustainable lifestyles.
No matter your career, like me or everyone here,
we are doing this to
to practice and advocate for sustainable lifestyles
in our generation
and pass a more beautiful and sustainable lifestyle down to our descendants,
allowing them to live more harmoniously with the environment and Earth due to
our efforts and have better lives. Thank you, everyone.