The eco-fighter tackling the scourge of rubbish on China’s beaches

Liu Yonglong, a native of inland China, had long looked forward to travelling to the seaside and seeing the beauty of the country’s shores. But when he finally visited Shanghai’s beaches more than a decade ago, he was shocked by what he saw. Instead of the “clean and beautiful” sight he had expected to find, he saw sand covered with rubbish and water blanketed with a thick layer of litter. “As a person from a hinterland region, I always had an aspiration for the sea,” said Liu, who is from the northeast’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region. “But when I stood by the sea, I could not accept that it was so dirty.” The surprise, anger and disgust he felt drove Liu, 44, to launch Shanghai Rendu Ocean NGO Development Centre, a Chinese environmental group that focuses on marine rubbish. As part of its mission to reduce ocean garbage, the organisation has mobilised about 10,000 volunteers in 170 events over the past 12 years to collect some 25 tonnes of waste from Shanghai’s coastline. Rendu volunteers also present marine environmental education programmes at four primary schools in Shanghai. The organisation also has worked with other Chinese NGOs since 2015 on a beach-rubbish monitoring project at 25 seaside spots, detailing its findings in an annual report. Plastic pollution: 3 tonnes of trash picked up on beaches for Earth Day More than 60 per cent of trash dumped on beaches in mainland China is plastic, much of it packaging materials from the booming food delivery and online shopping sectors, according to Rendu. That statistic suggested China’s efforts to reduce overall plastic use had largely failed, said Liu who holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Shanghai’s Fudan University and founded Rendu in 2007 while working at a state-owned enterprise. He quit his “comfortable and lucrative” job six years later to devote himself to the environmental cause. He said China’s plastic heavy marine refuse differed from that of developed countries, where cigarette butts tended to be the dominant item in beach trash. In 2008, the Chinese government banned shops and wet markets giving away free plastic bags and introduced a mandatory charge of 0.2-0.5 yuan (three to seven US cents) per bag. China says progress made on water pollution, but battle remains But Liu said the order, which carried no penalties if violated, had been ineffective because people still widely used bags, boxes, cups and other plastic items. “What’s more, e-commerce, food delivery and other industries that involve plastic foam packaging have been growing rapidly,” he said. “The plastic items used in these sectors have become the top type of wastes on the beaches due to our country’s unsound cleaning and management system.” The top three rubbish categories – all plastic products – account for 60-80 per cent of all waste on China’s beaches. Cigarette butts represent less than 4 per cent of the total. Liu said the big problem with plastic rubbish was that it easily broke up in the sea or on beaches. “It’s difficult to clean up.” China’s southern coasts generally have more rubbish on them than northern ones, reflecting the south’s faster economic development, according to the NGO’s research. China plans major cut in number of people allowed to climb Everest But the authorities’ recognition and support of Rendu in recent years indicated they were making dealing with marine garbage a priority, Liu said. In November, China and Canada issued a joint statement acknowledging that plastic pollution harms ocean health and has the potential to hurt human health. The statement stressed the importance of taking a “sustainable life cycle approach” to managing plastics to reduce marine litter. It was unclear, however, which government department was responsible for China’s marine litter, Liu said, adding that he hoped the government would be “more open and solicit public opinion when facing the marine rubbish issue”. China needs US$147 billion to clean its urban rivers, environment ministry says But he does not think the situation can be turned around quickly. His view stems from his own experience as an environmentalist and a 2015 study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British charity that aims to accelerate the transition to a “circular economy” built on keeping resources in use for as long as possible. The foundation reported that if no concrete action was taken globally, the ocean would contain one tonne of plastic for every three tonnes of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish [by weight]. “I often cited these findings to raise public awareness,” Liu said. “It’s a bleak future because I expect there will be more marine rubbish on China’s coastlines in the next few years. “So it’s urgent for us to act now to stop that trend.”

The eco-fighter tackling the scourge of rubbish on China’s beaches

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Liu Yonglong decided to make a difference more than a decade ago and founded an NGO in Shanghai to turn back the tide of plastic washing up on the country’s shores

Liu Yonglong decided to make a difference more than a decade ago and founded an NGO in Shanghai to turn back the tide of plastic washing up on the country’s shores