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Environment

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Only 1% of the nation’s 640 million mobile phones get recycled
Sep 4, 2009 (WiC 29)

While iPhones and Ophones may be battling it out as China’s smartphone of choice, the country’s environmentalists have a different challenge: how to dispose of the country’s rapidly growing pile of discarded mobile phones. As the ...

Encouraging ‘Tone’

Former British leader Tony Blair jets in on mission to save world’s climate
Aug 28, 2009 (WiC 28)

When Tony Blair visited China in late 2007 – shortly after stepping down as the UK’s prime minister – his trip could hardly have been described as altruistic. The former Labour MP flew home $500,000 better off, after making a speech and ...

A city of bad elements

How mercury has poisoned Wanshan
Aug 21, 2009 (WiC 27)

In Wanshan they have a saying: Don’t drink the water, and don’t eat the vegetables. And with good reason. Until recently, Wanshan was the centre of the mercury industry, having first discovered deposits of the liquid metal in the 7th ...

The river sweats oil and tar, wrote TS Eliot – and often worse in China
Jul 31, 2009 (WiC 26)

It all started for Huo Daishan with photographs of dead fish. Huo was a newspaper photographer on an assignment at China’s Huai River. He remembered how blue the water was in his youth. Now a purplish foam covered the surface. Beneath it, ...

Unilever 1, the Vatican 0

Multinational’s carbon cops push for cleaner solution at its Chinese plant
Jul 31, 2009 (WiC 26)

Even the Vatican had given up on straw. Famously, news of the election of a new Pope was traditionally greeted with white smoke, aided by the throwing of straw on top of burning ballot papers. No longer, however, as the cutting edge Conclave ...

A backlash against foreign water companies
Jul 24, 2009 (WiC 25)

Legend has it that the founder of the Xia Dynasty – some 4,200 years ago – rose to power through an ability to “master the waters”. For 13 years Emperor Yu built waterworks to irrigate fields and prevent flooding. And as the historian ...

A load of rubbish

New “eco” incineration plants are proving controversial
Jul 3, 2009 (WiC 22)

The problem with rubbish is that there is no good way to get rid of it. Some readers will recall that we wrote an upbeat article in WiC6, that looked at how a host of Chinese cities were aiming to build new garbage incineration plants. These ...

Quenching Beijing’s thirst

Capital city plans world's biggest desalination plant?
Jun 19, 2009 (WiC 20)

In its long history, China has been defined by a simple commodity: water. Its civilisation grew out of its two major waterways: the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Irrigation projects – began over 2,200 year ago – helped to unite the ...

An electric shock

A new green bike may not be so green after all, Nanning discovers
Jun 12, 2009 (WiC 19)

The world’s best selling bicycle was supposed to inspire international peace, and was to be called the Flying Dove accordingly. But somewhere along the manufacturing line in early Maoist China it morphed into the Flying Pigeon. More ...

Bags of savings

Statistic of the week: China now uses 40 billion fewer plastic bags per year
Jun 5, 2009 (WiC 18)

A man dressed as Charlie Chaplin is on a mission. He waddles around the city of Zhengzhou twirling his cane and trying to persuade shoppers at a vegetable bazaar not to use plastic bags, writes the Henan Commercial News. When Chaplin (a local ...

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