Get some culture in a bottle

In China, there are an infinite number of different bottled drinks to sample. As some of you may or may not know, the tap-water infrastructure is under development and thus, it is not recommended that tap-water be consumed. As a result of this, potable water is bought in bulk or flavoured drinks can be bought just about anywhere.

At many tourist, shopping or public sites, there are countless drink vendors setting up shop. The vending premises can vary, from little grocery stores to vendors carrying around crates of water, you can be sure that your thirst can be satisfied.

There are all flavours of tea, milk drinks, mini-yogurts, soft drinks, fruit drinks, bottled water and countless others I might have missed trying. Personally, I try to keep my consumption of these delicious drinks to a minimum to conserve plastic. Though I carry my little thermos cup around filled with water, the general trend seems to be to buy these bottles of drinks wherever one goes. Thus, I think there is a lot of potential for advocating the use of refillable bottles.

However, I do see a good number of people carrying around Nalgene type bottles or thermoses of their own. At grocery stores, refillable water bottles fill many rows of shelves so its not like the refillable culture does not exist here. At work for example, thermoses and mugs are the norm.

A network of recycling collectors have sprung up around the ubiquitous nature of the disposable drink bottles. Basically, these immigrants from rural areas try to pick up as much of these plastic bottles and other recyclable materials as possible. This involves going around with a large bag, asking people, searching through garbage cans or picking up these discarded bottles. Because of their efforts, not many of these plastic bottles end up in the landfill but are given a new life. This is made possible by recycling centers offering to pay money for the plastic bottles. At the end of a hard-day's work, the bottle collectors take their treasure troves to be recycled. I would venture to guess that more plastic bottles are diverted in China than in Canada. Because, despite all of our environmental education, I always see people putting their recycling in the trash *cough* Vacouver airport *cough*. Often, these plastics are not recovered (but sometimes, I do a bit of trash diving because I can't bear to think of perfectly good bottles being junked for life) I admit that I'm a bit different in that respect. Thankfully, due to the street recyclers, I haven't had to make a trash diving expedition to ease my conscience yet!

Photo source: http://www.hongfk.net/yl/%E5%86%B0%E8%8C%B6%E7%B3%BB%E5%88%97.jpg