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Yang finds treasure in trash

By Sun Xiaohua (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-30 07:57

A boy barters used Tetra Pak boxes for notebooks at a community recycling stations. [Courtesy of Tetra Pak China]

One man's trash is another man's treasure. At least, that has been the experience of Yang Jun, general manager of the Fuyang Fulun Paper Mill.

Yang hails from Zhejiang province, renowned for producing some of China's smartest business people. He was working as a coal trader when, one day in 2004, he had a brainstorm.

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"The port of Fuyang receives tens of thousands of tons of imported waste paper every day," Yang said.

"Mixed in there are tons and tons of beverage containers that nobody wants, because they're covered with plastic and have some metal foil, which makes them hard to treat. I thought, 'Maybe I can find a way."

The most popular container, the Tetra Brik aseptic package, contains 75 percent paper, 20 percent plastic, and 5 percent aluminum. Yang found a way to recycle the containers, separating the plastic and aluminum from the pulp.

Last year, Yang treated about 5,500 tons of used beverage cartons, salvaging 2,800 tons of kraft paper, 1,600 tons of aluminum, and 1,100 tons of plastic.

He buys the boxes for 1,800 yuan per ton. He sells the recycled kraft paper for between 3,800 and 7,200 yuan per ton, depending on the quality, and the plastic for 3,000 yuan per ton. He has even found a buyer on Alibaba for the aluminum residue, which fetches 1,100 yuan per ton.

Yang declined to say how much he has made, but said he has invested $3 million in developing a collection network.

Yang's business is not without problems. His factory is designed to treat 10,000 tons of used beverage cartons, but he has only been able to find half that much raw material.

"I have invested a large part of my profit in setting up a collection network," Yang said. "Although I have suppliers in 40 cities nationwide, it is far from enough."

The number of recycled Tetra Pak containers has increased steadily, from 180 million in 2005 to 2.7 billion last year. Including Tetra Pak, the industry produces 35 billion containers; about 10 percent of these are recycled.

Although Chinese laws encourage recycling, there is no comprehensive waste sorting system. Most waste sorting is done by individual collectors, directly from trashcans. Each collector picks up only what he can sell. If no one picks it up, the trash is incinerated and buried in landfills.

Engineer Ren Kai joined Tetra Pak China in 2006 and has spent a lot of time trying to persuade recyclers to pick up used milk and beverage containers. In some communities, residents can now sell the waste cartons to collectors or barter them for stationary made from recycled flowers.