Sunday, March 30, 2008

Compare and Contrast--the recycling in big city and small city in China

Do you still remember the Iraq War which happened a few years ago? What was the main purpose of the US government to invade Iraq? Most of us respond with the answer of oil. Nowadays, the natural resources, like oil, are overused. Most countries are lacking natural resources. Hence they must try their best to seek more resources. Besides robbing from other countries, like America, most of the countries find that recycling is a more gentle and efficient way to solve the resource problem.
What is recycling? According to Wikipedia, "recycling is the reprocessing of old materials into new products, with the aims of preventing the waste of potentially useful materials, reducing the consumption of fresh raw materials and reducing energy usage, and thereby lowering greenhouse gas emissions compared to virgin production."
For the essay, I will compare and contrast the recycling in Beijing and my hometown. Therefore, we can observe the difference and similarity between the big city and small city in China.
For the similarity, first of all, both these two local governments have their own recycling policies. They both encourage their own citizens to put the renewable garbage into the special dustbins which have already been categorized. This kind of dustbins makes the life easier for the cleaning workers to recycle the waste. The situation in the past was people did not categorize their rubbish and just anyhow threw them into the dustbin. It was almost impossible for the cleaning workers to do the recycling job. In addition, both governments will subsidize the shops which sell the stuffs made by recycling resources. This government's behavior will lower down the price in the shops which sell recycling stuffs. As a result, consumers would like to spend their money in these shops since we all like cheaper things. Hence, subsidizing from the government helps the recycling in certain aspects. Moreover, the governments also urge the school to teach their students about the recycling so that these students receive this recycling concept from a very young age. For the younger generation, it is really a good course.
Meanwhile, the differences between the two cities are also quite obvious. First and foremost, in Beijing, we can see different types of recycling dustbins for different categories of garbage. For example, in Beijing, we can see the special dustbin only for metals, while some are only for glasses and some are for papers. Hence, it is much easier for the relevant anthorities to recycle the rubbish and not waste too much. However, the situation in my hometown is quite different. The government in my hometown only offers one single type of dustbin for renewable rubbish. Therefore, our citizens will drop any kinds of renewable garbage into the only one type of dustbin. Form my point of view, it is not only a waste of the cleaning worker's time, but also a waste of the renewable resources. What is more? The so-called "population quality" is also quite different in the two cities. In Beijing, all of the citizens will throw the rubbish into the recycling dustbin consciously. In my hometown, although the recycling dustbin has been put there, some of citizens won't use it. Maybe they felt it was troublesome to use it or did not notice the recycling dustbin at all. It is really a waste of resources.
In conclusion, after the discussion i mentioned above, we can see the differences and similarities of the recycling in China's big city and small city. The governmentof the small city should make some improvements on the recycling problem so that to catch up with big cities. If everyone holds our hands together to do the recycling, our country will become better and better.

2 comments:

wee said...

'Besides robbing from other countries, like America, most of the countries find that....'

This sentence seem very prejudice although it is true.:-)

Hmm,I do agree with what you have stated in this essay.Public consciousness on environmental problems must be very high too. Besides that,I think your city government can't do wat have Beijing government done is because mainly Beijing as the China main city and tourist's attraction. It has to show to the world as a clean city.

Steve, where are your references??

Zhang Xuejie said...

Yeah, I agree you that the environment belongs to everyone in the "world village".