Get It Louder & Eat Up are now in Beijing. I guess predictably there’s more media coverage here in the capital. We did interviews with Beijing TV and CCTV this weekend, plus a few events related to the exhibition. If anything funny results from it, we’ll post it up…

Any Pekingese out there, drop by the SOHO Shangdu mall and check the show out…

This is the central image that sets off the theme.

The Chinese use 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, which adds up to 1.7 million cubic metres of timber or 25 million full-grown trees.
Source: Clifford Coonan, “The true price of disposable chopsticks,” The Independent, 27 March 2006

Every 20 cars added to China’s automobile fleet require the paving of an estimated 0.4 hectares of land (1 acre, or roughly the area of a football field) for parking lots, streets, and highways. Thus the 2 million new cars sold in 2003 meant paving over 40,000 hectares of land—the equivalent of 56,000 football pitches. If this was cropland, it could have produced 160,000 tons of grain—enough to feed half a million Chinese.
Source: Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the earth, (New York: WW. Norton & Company, 2005), 139

Now Theo, an architect an map maker, originally from the verdant slopes of Austria, how flat landing it in Holland. Check his company TD Architects here.

The cost of fixing China’s environment:
China emitted 511.8 billion yuan (US$64 billion) worth of pollution in 2004, equivalent to 3.1% of GDP. Or 581 Shenzhou 6 space missions.

The estimated clean-up cost for this pollution was calculated at 287.4 billion yuan (US$36 billion), 1.8% of GDP. Or the same as the cost of 22 Beijing Olympics.

If the country used current technology and today’s standards to solve this pollution at the source, it would need a one-off investment of 1,080 billion (US$135 billion), 6.8% of GDP. Or 2 Three Gorges Dams, 2 water relocation programs, and 2 gas transfer programs.

Sources: Stephen Green, “China’s light green GDP,” chinadialogue.net, 24 December 2006; Shenzhou 6 price estimate; Olympic price estimate; 3G price estimate; Gas diversion price estimate; Water transfer price estimate

If China adopted the American lifestyle (meaning same per capita consumption), by 2031:
*China would consume 1,352 million tons of grain, compared to 382 million tons used in 2004. This is equal to two thirds of the entire 2004 world grain harvest of just over 2 billion tons.
*China’s meat consumption would rise from the current 64 million tons to 181 million tons, roughly four fifths of current world meat production of 239 million tons.
*China would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. The world currently produces 79 million barrels per day.
*China would use 2.8 billion tons of coal annually—more than the current world production of 2.5 billion tons.
*China’s aggregate steel use would jump from 258 million tons today to 511 million tons, more than the current consumption of the entire Western industrialized world.
*China would need 303 million tons of paper, roughly double the current world production of 157 million tons. That would require over 5.1 billion trees
*China would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars in 2031—well beyond the current world fleet of 795 million.
*China would drink 124 billion liters of bottled water - almost equal to the 154 billion liters consumed by the entire world in 2004. I
Sources: Lester R. Brown, “Learning from China,” Earth Policy Institute Online, 9 March 2005; American Obesity Association, “AOA Fact Sheet“.

Highlights:
Earth Day is more popular in China than in Japan.

Recycling isn’t enough.

Everybody knows that plastic bags cause environmental damage.

Advocating policy to businesses and government is more effective than promoting conservation among the public.

I read in a magazine about the “Bye Bye Throw Away Culture”campaign that you helped organize around Earth Day this year. How did that get started?

We set up this campaign last year, in October. The main aim is to reduce plastic bags, and by doing so reducing our environmental impact. We tried to do this by promoting the “three R principles” - reduce, reuse, and recycle - with the emphasis placed more on reduce and reuse. Recycling still requires production, because you have to reproduce it, and that’s a process of polluting and consuming more energy. At least you avoid the raw material extraction, but still we focus more on reduction and reusing material.

How do you get that message out?

Our strategy is twofold: one is increasing people’s awareness of the environmental issue and, on the other hand, we try to work with supermarkets and retailers to encourage them to adopt a plastic bag reduction policy - for example by charging for bags and creating economical incentives for customers to bring their own bags. So far, we’ve been more inclined towards the promotional-educational part, because actually working with stores is really, really difficult, because they their own profit [concerns], they have their own business strategy, they have their own public relations strategy. So, it hasn’t been going very well. Even at the participant stores, in the beginning they may have adopted some [plastic bag reduction] policies, but it doesn’t last. It’s kind of difficult to operate, so eventually, they don’t continue it.

Another problem that we’ve been facing is a lack of influence among the people - even in Beijing. I always feel the need to do something to draw people’s attention, through the media, etc. The activity that you came to know used Earth Day to try to make an event as big as possible. So that campaign was not only about plastic bags, but throw-away culture in general. As the name says, “Bye-bye throw away culture week”. It was a week-long campaign to reconsider lifestyle, and encourage people to make a more sustainable way. I used the Earth Day, 22 April, because, during that time, people, media and students [are talking about the environment]. I was really surprised last year to see how big Earth Day can be. In Japan, nobody knows what the 22nd of April means. Seriously, it’s only among the NGOs or environmentalists. But here in China, I would say it’s much bigger than in Japan - that’s the impression I got. So, I took advantage of that.

What other kinds of events have you done?

We just had an event last weekend at a vegetable market, not supermarket, just a [farmer’s] market. There we did some research. It was actually a promotional activity, but mainly we were doing research. I designed a questionnaire that had questions, like “Do you know a lot about the environment problems caused by the excessive use of plastic bags?” And 98 percent of the people said, “Yes, I do.” And I was even told, “Who doesn’t know? Everyone knows.” And some people were obviously getting upset, like “Don’t ask me stupid questions.”

Did that surprise you?

I wasn’t shocked. I already knew, because every time I do that at schools, passersby are like, “Mr Ikeda, I think we should change direction and focus more on something else. We just don’t know what we should focus on.” But I wasn’t convinced enough, maybe because it was always in universities. Students really do know, and volunteers feel that - we all know these problems, and Chinese aren’t unenvironmentally-oriented people. But that vegetable market event last weekend convinced me of what I was already thinking - no more promotion. If you want to do it, it has to be in a visual way - on TV with really really scary, disgusting images of plastic bags coming out animals’ guts. Other than that, I think people feel like: we all know, but we don’t have enough incentive, and it’s not our fault. You often hear “It’s not our fault.” While people were getting upset with me - “Don’t ask me that stupid question!” - they were also saying, “Don’t ask me to change, because it none of my fault. The stores hand the bags out and the government’s not taking any action…” And actually that’s not true, the government has regulations, and the thing is that they do know the regulation is in existence. So, then it’s like, “Ok, so you guys know there’s a regulation, but you’re still blaming everyone else.”

But they make sense. The point they are making makes sense: they all know, but it’s not their fault, because they don’t have enough incentive to change. So after that event, I collected all the results, and put it in an excel chart, and as the results come out, it’s more clear where I should put the focus - policy. I’ve been working on it, but part time. I was spending more time on organizing events, but now I want to work on creating a system that makes it payable. I think that’s the only way to actually curb consumption. As long as it’s free - or supposedly free, because there’s a hidden cost to plastic bags - then it’s really difficult to curb consumption patterns. So, that’s a change in my direction. The question now is how can we find a channel to access the authorities? I have one who works as a consultant to the municipal government, but we’ll see…

What other obstacles to come across as an activist here?

The other thing is that it’s a hundred times easier if I work on a campaign that advocates the protection of animals or forests in Yunnan or Sichuan Province or even in Indonesia. Everyone is happy to take part in this kind of petition. I don’t think you would have one exception, everyone would say, “Yeah! You’re right. We should do that.” But while you’re saying that, nobody knows what we can do. Because we don’t know how it’s associated with our lifestyle, people can easily express their appreciation. But things will change if I say, “Well, in order to protect the forest over there, I need to charge more for each piece of paper you consume.”

I’m now trying to work with printing companies and shops in local communities. Now they charge one Mao (.10 RMB) or less, but if I advocate the we should charge five Mao per page, people say, “Why the hell are you doing that? Are you working with a paper company?” And I say, “No, it’s just the fact that they’re using paper from forests. And say, hypothetically, that all the paper had to come from that area, then there’s no other solution. Then we can’t blame the producer either, because there’s a market so loggers have to go cut down trees for paper. So that’s why I have to charge more, unfortunately. Do you agree with that? Would you sign this petition?” And that’s the situation that I’m in. I’m not advocating protecting a polar bear.

How do you react to this kind of negative response?

Even though it’s a very limited population, I can get very good reaction from university students by talking about the “lifecycle assessment” of products. So, I have powerpoint, and I even have a poster, and I emphasize that we shouldn’t just focus on what happens after you’ve used a product - especially packaged products. People only focus on degradability - is it going back to soil easily or not. That’s one issue, but the main issue is not actually what happens after you discard something. It’s before it even comes to the table or the shelf of a store - that’s where the major environmental destruction happens. It depends on the product, but for most products, the extraction of raw materials and the production stage is what causes the consumption of all these resources and pollution generation.

And when I explain that, most of the people get it. And I always conclude by saying, “It doesn’t really matter what kinds of products you use, as long as you’re maintaining an excessive amount of daily consumption. There’s ten or twenty million plastic bags used per day just in Beijing. Surely, it would still have an impact if those were paper bags or degradable bags. The bottom line is reducing consumption.” Then people say, “But bags are so convenient. You can’t take these bags away from us.” And I say, “When did I say I’m hoping to eliminate bags? I’m not doing that, I’m just encouraging you to reuse them, just as you would with cloth. Nobody would throw a shirt away after wearing it once, except maybe Hollywood stars. Just regard your plastic bags as things that you cherish.” Then I always pull out the yellow plastic bag that I’ve been using for about half a year, and that gives a visual impact. And until they see it, a lot people don’t consider that you can reuse plastic bags. And then I just say, “Yeah, who said plastic bags are a really, really bad thing? It’s just a matter of excessive or not excessive. I would fight to reduce the use of cotton bags if people just used them once and threw them away.”

And then some people say, “But that only works for you or maybe someone like me who’s patient enough to stand here, but look at them. Nobody’s listening to you, they’re just walking away. What are you going to do?” Then I would move on to introduce ideas like the plastic bag charge. By bringing this issue up I’m very likely to have an argument with a lot of people, and then I’m the only one who’s advocating. But that’s a process of making them familiar with a policy that I believe sooner or later will be coming. I’d say it has more likelihood than banning plastic bags. That’s just not realistic, because plastic bag dependency here in China is actually greater than in the west, because here they’re even used to hold food like baozi or soup. And you can’t really do that with paper, and you wouldn’t want to ruin your favorite cloth bag by putting unwashed vegetable or greasy baozi in it.

Jenny Wilson - “Let my shoes lead me forward”

Download audio file (letmyshoesleadmeforward.mp3)

This week’s jam comes from our man Ajoy Sahu, cobbler extraordinaire. Ajoy’s one of main people behind Terra Plana a global footwear juggernaut that produces “Worn Again” a line of 99% recycled shoes and accessories. Salute!

We finally got around to think about logos. Each of us made a proposal, but I won’t say which is which. (But I will say that I think the one of the *left side* is too literal.)

We’d really like to know what others think. Make a vote and tell us which one we should go with. Thanks!

Contact us

7 billion cigarette butts are littered by Australia’s 3.7 million smokers every year. Cigarette butt litter accounts for around 50% of all the litter in Australia.

Source: Planet Ark

According to “Butts Out” an anti-ciggie litter advocacy group, that’s “enough butts to fill seven Olympic swimming pools.”

Download audio file (17%20Sex%20Planet.mp3)

Words cannot express.

The party was a fund raiser for the Xin Xin School, a primary school for the children of migrant workers in the northern edge of Beijing. As is widely known, China maintains a strict policy of fixed residence, and migrating for work is still technically illegal. Practically, of course, the system is much looser, and everyday people leave their officially-registered homes seeking a better life. The law looks the other way, because China’s economy demands cheap labor, but migrant workers remain extremely vulnerable. They and their families have much less access to education and government services, and virtually no recourse against bosses who mistreat or underpay them, because, technically, they are breaking the law by having moved to the city in the first place.

Schools like Xin Xin are informal attempts to provide for the millions of people who fall into the gulf between policy and reality in New China. Last night, the goal was to raise enough money to allow the school to add an additional three grades (7,8,9) so that the oldest students can continue their education.

Music was provided by Phonograph, by FAR Beijing’s greatest classic rock band.

They killed it.

The event itself was organized by my father James, so one more reason to big it up…

No word yet on if they raised the ¥30,000 necessary for the expansion, but if you’re interested in helping, please write to:
James McGetrick
xinxin.appeal@gmail.com
or
Compassion for Migrant Children
T:86-10-64656100
E: info@cmc-china.org