Global Recycling

India

In Dharavi, India, many people make a living by creating their own recycling factories. It is estimated that the self-made recycling industry employs roughly 200,000 people. It’s not merely taking care of waste, but a way of life and a source of income.
India recycles roughly 40 percent of their e-waste a year. This includes such items as broken or unwanted electrical appliances.

In China, recycling isn’t just a citizen responsibility; it’s now considered second nature. Citizens and government alike in China are taking steps to encourage recycling. This has also become a profit machine. The citizens who diligently collect recyclables off the street are numbered around 2.5 million people. These scrap collectors earn the equivalent of $150 a month which is roughly half of what a cab driver earns in that country in the same time frame.
It is estimated that 20 percent of the countries waste is disposed of improperly in China. This includes such items as building materials.
Despite this, Beijing has built the world’s largest recycling facility and continues to install recycling bins. The city of Beijing hopes to increase their recycling rate from 10 percent to 80 percent by 2010.
In Japan, recycling is a $360 billion dollar industry.
In 1995, Japan established the Containers and Packaging Recycling Act to “meet the increasing need to reduce the volume of solid waste and make full use of recyclable resources by means of sorted collection and to recycle waste containers and wrapping.” The Japan Containers and Packaging Recycling Association helps to take on this responsibility by investing and managing recycling fee

In Brazil, nearly 500 cooperatives employ approximately 500,000 recycling collectors. This is a $3 billion industry.
Fifty percent of the 140,000 tons of trash generated daily in Brazil is recycled.
Chile opened its first electronic scrap recycling facility in 2005.
Peru opened its first recycling plant in 2007, which processes plastic packaging.

The Glass Recycling Company has partnered with the government and glass manufacturers in South Africa in an attempt to increase the current glass recycling rate. This partnership increased recycling rates from 148,000 tons to 183,000 tons of glass recycling in roughly a year and a half.
In Egypt, refuse collectors actually buy the right to collect trash since it is seen as such a profitable business. The collectors gather and recycle anything they can turn for a profit.

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