Awards promote waste classification

HANGZHOU - While extreme cases have seen Chinese teens illegally sell their kidneys for an iPhone, Wang Jie, a resident of Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang province, found an easier way to get one of the must-have devices.

Wang, a senior student of Zhejiang University of Technology, won an iPhone 5 earlier this month for sorting garbage.

At the end of March, a waste classification program was launched in three residential communities in Xiacheng District in Hangzhou. Residents amass credit, redeemable for prizes, for sorting garbage into different categories before disposing of it in their communities.

The resident who gains the most points in a quarter is rewarded an iPhone 5, and whoever accumulates the most points in the year will win use of a vehicle for five years, said Sun Liping, director of the office which administrates Wang's community.

Sun introduced the scheme whereby an intelligent recycling platform registers the type of garbage a resident has and dispenses printed bar codes to stick to the bags of junk. When workers scan the bar codes while disposing of the bags, points are recorded on the residents' bank cards.

Wang got more than 150,000 points through classifying garbage in the past three months, and he said his secret was to collect electronic trash like scrap computer mice, USB flash drives and cell phone batteries, which are worth many more points than any other household waste.

According to the requirements, a one-kg glass bottle can redeem 20 points, but a mobile charger or an abandoned USB flash drive gets 1,350 points.

"This method is aimed at raising people's consciousness of waste classification and encouraging more residents to sort waste when they are otherwise apt to throw it away without classification," Sun said, adding that the awarding of especially high points for electronics is because this waste can cause heavy pollution, a fact that people often overlook.