Converting rural China to the zero waste revolution, one village at a time
- After teaching environmentally friendly techniques to dozens of countryside communities, Tan Yiyong is finding his home village the most challenging of all
- In the first two months the team picked up 20 tonnes of rubbish from around the houses and fields of Liantang in Hunan province
A small village on a hillside in central China is leading the way in addressing one of the great issues of the modern era – how to reduce human impact on the environment to zero.
Only some 20 residents, all of them elderly, remain in the village of Liantang in Guiyang county, Hunan province. The rest have moved away over the years, seeking the opportunities and modern conveniences of urban life.
But one man has returned to the place where he was born and raised, determined to remake it as a zero waste community. Tan Yiyong, 39, founded a non-profit organisation in 2013 called Jiao Dao Xiao Dao, promoting waste sorting and an eco enzyme which can be made out of household scraps and used as a fertiliser and cleaning agent.
In 2016, the organisation turned its attention to China’s rural villages and, after working with dozens of communities, Tan and his team are now teaching zero waste concepts to his home village of Liantang, where they spent the first two months picking up 20 tonnes of waste from around the houses and fields.
“I guess it was probably all the rubbish accumulated over the past centuries,” Tan said.
For decades, to save money and time, the residents of Liantang disposed of their daily waste in bushes or ditches, in front of or behind their homes, wherever they found it convenient and appropriate to do so. A large rubbish bin installed by the government at the entrance to the village was largely ignored, as it required the residents to call a collector and pay for the transport of the waste to the nearest landfill themselves.