Junk-buyers as the linkage between waste sources and redemption depots in urban China: the case of Wuhan

This paper locates junk-buyers in the recycling chain that includes waste source, collection system and end-user. With increasing needs of convenience for recycling at waste sources but disappearing redemption depots in city blocks of China, junk-buyers play a role of linkage between waste sources and redemption depots. It is these door-to-door collectors who make the general public aware of cash value inside recyclable waste. Also, the motivation of getting cash back pushes junk-buyers become immediate suppliers to redemption depots. Without junk-buyers as door-to-door collectors, the current waste recovery system in post-Mao's China would brake down. However, as in other developing countries, the junk-buyer occupation in urban China currently is typically driven by economic incentives, and the door-to-door collection of recyclable waste completely falls into junk-buyer individual business. It is difficult for junk-buyers who mainly come from the countryside to establish stable relations with waste sources for lack of recognition from urban society. The appropriate allocation of individual time and space becomes crucial to conducting the door-to-door activities so as to collecting more recyclables. While the collecting territory as the condition of production is positively reflected by the usual extent of the collecting distance, junk-buyers mostly spend time in finding sellers instead of simply expanding their collecting territory. This is a typical example of the cheapest and lowest skilled labor forces being in relatively unlimited supply in a developing country. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.