It’s a dirty job and I’m the one to do it, says millionaire who risks his reputation to break China’s litter habit
- Every morning and night for the past four years, businessman Zhong Congrong has been on the streets of Chongqing to stop people dropping their litter
- Admired as a welfare champion, the 54-year-old says he has been beaten and insulted for his cause
Zhong Congrong owns three businesses in southwestern China which together are worth more than 100 million yuan (US$14.3 million), but he prefers to risk being labelled as an environment “nut” who wants to clean up Chongqing.
Every morning after breakfast and each evening after supper, the entrepreneur pulls on an orange T-shirt, gets into his Mercedes-Benz SUV and heads downtown. For one or two hours, he walks the streets, picking scraps of rubbish off the road and talking to passers-by about littering.
“It is my mission to change people’s bad habits and to raise their awareness of protecting the environment,” said Zhong, who has been on this mission for four years. It has brought the 54-year-old civic rewards, earned him a bruising or two from people who do not want to listen to his message and it nearly cost him his marriage.
Throughout it all, he has remained a persistent voice for the environment in the city of more than 30 million people and, as some of them have learned, he refuses to give up.
On mainland China, cities have banned littering and some hit offenders with fines as high as 200 yuan. However, the rules are rarely obeyed and feebly enforced, and while there are plenty of dustbins in public places, litter is still a nuisance.
Zhong said his mission started in 2015 after he met a woman in her 70s in Sanya, the southern coastal city on the South China Sea island of Hainan. He was struck by how dedicated she and her husband were when they went litter picking each day.