7/30/2002: Chinese recycling
 

http://cellar.org/2002/chinarecycling.jpg

This gent in Shanghai has collected plastic bottles for recycling and has worked out a way to transport them to the recycling depot.

For his efforts, he'll get 0.08 yen for every 2.2 pounds of material: that's $0.01.

Now, can someone more enterprising than me - or somewhat less enterprising than this guy - work out exactly how much his bundles are worth.

Remember that shot of the Chinese dust storm? I sure hope this poor fellow doesn't get any stiff gusts. That doesn't look like the most secure load.

Re: 7/30/2002: Chinese recycling
 

Well, I'm not much good at estimating, but in order to net a dollar, that'd have to be 220 pounds of bottles, which looks to be about twice his weight.

http://www.msnbc.com/c/0/95/971/inli...02_0725_11.jpg

I was just looking at MSNBC's pic's of the week and came across this one.

Another kind of fishing
An Indonesian scavenger rows his makeshift raft to collect plastic amidst a pile of garbage clogging a Jakarta river July 24. The man can earn $1.60 a day to support his family.

yen eh?
 

...any particular reason a man in shanghai would be paid in YEN.....?

Naw, I must have messed that up. Was it yuen?

yuAn
 

i assume it would be yuan he was getting paid in.....but 0.08 Yuan works out to roughly $0.009 per 2.2 lbs.....which seems preposterously low to me.....

incidently i move to shanghai in a week.....hurraY!

around the world
 

i just moved to shanghai.
hurraY!
i have been here for a week now.
hopefully pix to come and stories and whatnot.

What will you be doing in Shanghai? New job?

carpet designer
 

i am actually doing an internship through the cdn govt.
i am a graphic designer in the production section of a carpet company.

very wacky.

my degree is in marine biology.
i had a photography company in vancouver.

so clearly carpet design is right up my alley.

started on monday and so far so good.

and i saw a guy on a bike with tons of bottles just the other day. . .

How does one go about designing carpet?

From what I gather ...

you take a fish ... I mean, you take a picture of a fish ... and then you ... ;)

complex machinations.
 

so.
how does one design a carpet you ask.....?

well....i could get into all of the nitty gritty level loop tip shear heat set solution dyed machinations of it, but these are really buzz words that i have no idea what they mean.

from what i can gather you design your pattern's looks in photoshop then fire it into this proprietary dutch program that simulates the pattern in 3D. from there it goes into this mock-up carpet machine that actually produces the carpet itself. but instead of the whole process it just punches the nylon yarn through an acetate-like material, and voila - you have a demo carpet to look at to see if it is actually roughly how you designed it.

i could even put a picture of say, uh, myself on a carpet. i will post a pic if that ever happens. . .