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my name is Adam inter and I'm the author
of junkyard planet travels in the
billion-dollar trade Guangdong provinces
in the south of China and it's the
manufacturing capital of the country
it's been referred to as the workshop of
the world and if you're the workshop of
the world you need raw materials and so
China's also is the scrap yard to the
world and Guangdong is the capital of
the scrap fair of the world and if you
go around Guangdong there's lots of
small towns that specialize in recycling
different kinds of objects shijou which
is a small village actually outside of
ching-yuen is about 150 miles north of
Guangzhou and it has become over the
years a capital for the recycling of
low-quality wire and amongst the
low-quality wire that they recycle there
are Christmas tree lights these are not
telecommunication cables they're usually
very cheap the insulation on them is
quite cheap and in years past prior to
about 2009 the way that stuff used to be
recycled was you would get a can of gas
pour the gas onto the wire get a match
set it on fire and when it all cooled
off in the morning you would pull the
plastic that remains and the ashes
remains away from the copper and then
you had some you know very nice and
burned copper but around 2009 a few
things happen that changed how she jal
recycles wire including Christmas tree
lights one was the Chinese government
was starting to crack down on air
pollution and burning wire obviously was
one of the things that they wanted to
get rid of the second thing that
happened was the price of oil was
spiking and suddenly the insulation on
those Christmas tree lights was worth a
lot of money so when I turned up in Jeju
around 2011 they had started developing
really interesting recycling systems
that solved both of these problems and
the factory that I went to was
introduced to me as one of the leading
recyclers of this material it recycled
at the time around 2 million
of American Christmas tree lights per
year and it was one of nine or 10 such
factories in shijou and as I was told
she Adele probably recycled at the time
about 20 million pounds of American
Christmas tree lights imported American
Christmas tree lights every year so the
the system that they devised as a
mechanical system that's really the
principle is no different than how you
pan for gold which is if you take a pan
and you get sand and gold pieces in it
you take water and and the gold is
heavier than most of the sand so it
adheres to one end of the pan and the
sand sort of rolls right off the way it
works in shijou is you take the
Christmas tree lights and you of course
you need to reduce them in size so they
put them into these shredders and these
shredders have blades that have been
calibrated to cut the lights very small
so what you end up with after they go
through there is a mush basically of
plastic rubber copper glass and whatever
else goes into the Christmas tree lights
and it's mixed with water for two
reasons one it gets very hot in those
shredders so if you didn't have some
water cooling it off those things would
explode in second you want something a
little bit gooey for the workers to
actually shovel so they can put on what
are these very large water tables and if
you look at the video I took of the
factory you'll notice water shooting
across the tables it's not completely
clear but the tables are actually
inclined upward and the reason for that
is it makes it easier for the separation
to occur so the water shoots up and the
lightweight materials the glass the
plastic the rubber sort of shoots off
the side of the table and the copper
which is heavier than anything else on
the table goes off the back end and you
get a very very nice separation you know
that that can then be sold and is sold
to other factories in the case of
Raymond's factory they were selling the
copper to other other Christmas tree
light to manufacture so it's a perfect
example of the circular economy the
rubber at the time and the plastic was
being sold to slippers on manufacturers
so it's a it's a terrific example a
low-tech example of how you can create a
circular economy
that you know that doesn't require
massive investments in technology the
other thing to note about the system is
that yes it does use water but that
water even though it's being lifted out
of a nearby creek it's not being
discharged instead of circulating
through the system until it evaporates
and then they take more water and so you
are eliminating another possible source
of pollution so the next time you buy a
strand of Christmas tree lights think
that may be the one you just bought was
last year's Christmas tree lights that
you dropped off at a Salvation Army a
goodwill or put in a recycling bin at
your curb that the world of recycling
and products is far more complex and
more circular than many of us ever
imagined and is only becoming better as
time goes on
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