During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, I’m posting photos taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s Scene shows what many people in China (including a ranking government official whom I met today) characterize as “foreign trash” and many people outside of China characterize as “dumped” waste. Click to enlarge.To be precise, the image, taken two weeks ago at a scrap metal warehouse in Ningbo, China, shows scrap copper wire and tubing freshly unloaded from a shipping container that just arrived from the United States. I am talking about the copper pipe that used to send water flowing through your bathroom; the old telephone wire that once carried the voice of your best friend. Is it trash? This afternoon, in pursuit of an answer to this question I showed the photo to two scrap dealer friends of mine, and asked for a price. The consensus was that it’s worth around $3/lb at current market prices (for the professional scrapper crowd: minus twenty to twenty-five off the COMEX). Now consider the fact that there was 40,000 lb of this stuff in the container. That is to say, somebody sent roughly $120,000 worth of “foreign trash” to China. Of course, it’s entirely possible that somebody, somewhere in America, is willing to dump $120,000 worth of trash on China without any thought of being paid for it; but I’ve yet to find that person. Indeed, according to data from China Customs that I received this afternoon, between January and September of this year, China imported 3.19 mmt of copper scrap worth $10 billion (the US was the leading exporter). Much of it looked like this – that is, it looked like foreign trash being dumped in Ningbo, China. But, of course, it wasn’t trash. It was something much more valuable that – if one can get past how it looks – makes the world a cleaner, greener place.

During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, I’m posting photos taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s Scene shows Chinese workers emptying the sacks of plastic bottles that we saw in Monday’s Scene. Click to enlarge.

This image, taken at the largest plastic bottle recycling facility between Chongqing (arguably the largest city on the planet), and Chengdu (a seriously massive city in its own right), shows workers doing what workers in plastic bottle recycling factories around the world: open bags of bottles and set them running up conveyors, where they’re picked over for trash, and then compacted into large plastic bottle bricks weighing hundred of pounds. From there, the bottles are shredded and sent to be made into new bottles. There’s nothing pretty or mysterious about it – the equipment at this factory is state-of-the-art European-built. But it is effective, profitable, and green while serving as the key link between your recycling bin and a new bottle.

During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, I’m posting photos taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s Scene shows a Chinese worker wandering among giant sacks containing thousands of plastic bottles. Click to enlarge:

This image, taken at a plastic bottle recycling facility in China’s Sichuan Province, offers a hint of just how much bottled water, Coke, and green tea is being consumed in China on a daily basis (there isn’t an imported foreign bottle in this photo – or factory). Trust me: it’s a lot. The problem is, despite the fact that everybody knows the volume of recyclable bottles tossed out by Chinese is growing, nobody can say for sure just how much it has grown by. The stats, quite simply, are mostly non-existent; those that exist might as well revert to non-existence. Still, at a time when environmental opposition to plastic bottled water is hurting the product in Europe and the US, China – where few trust the water supplies – is consuming more and more. Needless to say, if you’re drinking bottled Evian, you’re probably drinking bottled Coke, too. In China and other developing countries, low wages make for a strong incentive to recover plastic bottles from the trash, and sell them to people who find value in them – like recyclers. Thus, businesses like this one are thriving across China, supported by the growth in consumer demand for bottled beverages. No consumer demand, no need to recycle.

I’m thrilled to point readers in the direction of The Atlantic, where a new excerpt of Junkyard Planet is running. This is the third excerpt to run in advance of the November 12 release of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, and in many ways it’s the most personal one (see Bloomberg Businessweek and Foreign Affairs for earlier excerpts). There are two reasons. First, this excerpt recounts some of my family’s multi-generation history in the scrap metal trade – a history that threads Junkyard Planet. And second, my first mainstream writing (as opposed to trade writing) about the scrap trade was supported by the Atlantic. Thus, it’s really a treat to see it all come full circle with How China Profits From Our Junk.

Over the next few months I’ll be making appearances in the US, UK, China, Singapore, and Malaysia to talk about Junkyard Planet. An events page with confirmed dates can be viewed here. Additional dates will be posted in coming weeks (for all five countries). In the meantime, you can pre-order Junkyard Planet from your favorite online bookstore, now – links are available to the lower right of this post.

And finally, Goodreads is hosting a drawing to win one of five signed hardcover copies of the book. Enter here.