Shanghai Scrap

For the next day or so I’m lost in a sea of acronyms, terrific street food, and unexpected good fortune. Posting resumes on the weekend, I believe.

Back in May 2007 I attended a speech given by Feng Zhijun, then a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and the government official charged with corralling China’s Circular Economy law – the most ambitious environmental legislation in Chinese history – through China’s opaque legislative hurdles. The occasion of the speech was a recycling convention in Tianjin, and the advanced, printed copy of the speech suggested that it would be little more than a dry recitation of the law’s proposed provisions. But then, for reasons known only to Feng, he tossed the text to the side and went on a forty-five minute utterly candid rant that included a denunciation of the ostentatious hotel ballroom in which he was speaking, and a frank evaluation of China’s weak environmental regulatory apparatus. A few days later I filed a report on his speech for Recycling International (subscriber only), in which I described the key passage as follows:

… [Feng] turned his attention to the serious problems involved in regulating China’s scrap industry. He recounted that, last year, he and a delegation of environmental officials visited scrap processing companies in the nine provinces of the Yellow River region where “they all use waste treatment facilities.” After this announced inspection tour, several environmental officials remained behind, secretly. “And they saw that after we left, the local factories shut down their waste treatment facilities! They released waste water after we left.” From this example, Feng suggested that the autonomy and independence of local government is the main problem in developing a recycling economy for China. “In the past, there has been no link between law enforcement and legislation.” (more…)