Sanitation in Shrink-Wrap

Could have just cleaned the dishes in the sink...

The Litter Effect

I think trash here is one thing that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m living a city for the first time but I’ve seen a lot of people litter on the street. The amazing contradiction to people littering so much is the fact that there are only ever a few pieces of trash on the ground. The conclusion that I have made is that there are people paid to pick up the trash, lots and lots of people. Shanghai has roughly twenty two million people, about two and a half times the population of New York City. These people need jobs and for every job that requires one person to do, three people are assigned. This leads to empty clothing stores with six workers standing around doing nothing. The same applies for the trash situation. I feel that the people that litter watch their trash get picked up almost instantly and are almost encouraged to litter more. Hopefully this problem is figured out before it snowballs out of control.

We Could Just Add Recycling Bins…

The same craziness with littering carries over to recycling as well. China seems to lack an official recycling program but will still pay for plastic bottles. The result is many people whose unofficial job is to remove plastic bottles from the trash. I see these people everywhere. Just today I saw someone throw a plastic bottle in the trash and less than five seconds later someone else was picking it out and putting it into their bag. If only there was an official recycling program and then these people would be employed with a salary and the landfills wouldn’t be filling up at an exponential rate.