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Q: Do kids in China get taught how to recycle/be environmentally friendly?
I started learning about recycling back in kindergarden and spent many hours in school learning the basics about recycling and not throwing rubbish on the ground etc. When I look around here, I just don't get the impression that kids are taught these things here. I constantly see toddlers throwing food wrappers on the ground, with the mother watching and not saying anything. I hope I'm wrong, but I've a feeling I'm not.
12 years 14 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
its true, although the goverment encourages a lot, but nobody cares, they just throw junk where they eat and sleep, spit and shit any corner you can find, no wonder why China is the world's top ranked in pollution...
They do if they attend my classes, lol. We spend some time looking at "culture vs habit," and then, how that relates to our environment, both local and regional. Local starts in the classroom, and extends out to where we live, finally, to infinity and beyond.
Many of my students have expressed environmental concerns as one of the main challenges facing China in the near future. At the same time they express how apathetic everyone (else) appears, which is ironic, as when they leave I have to tell them to take their trash with them and not leave it under their desk, lol.
I think, in a general sense, people here are not taught about enviromental cleanliness. There may be laws about littering, etc., in some cities, but where I live, I have never seen it enforced. Some people look at littering as "job security" for the hordes of orange-vested street sweepers, as in "what would they have to do if there was no trash to pick up?!"
derek:
Your "Culture vs Habit" class is genius in my estimation. However, Sadly, like you said, the students seem oblivious when outside the classrooms. The "job security" function is all too true in their minds.
The answer is yes and many kids are doing better than their parents....
but China was an agriculture country for thousands of years and being modern not more than 30 years......it takes (about 100 years..my guess) for a whole 1.5 billion people to be modern and civilized......
derek:
No, it certainly doesn't take 100 years for 1 person to make 1 personal decision about where to throw litter, teach their children to not add to the pollution, not crap or piss in the streets or leave their car running while they wait for their kids at school. If the population were tuned in and cared about their country, they would need all of 1 minute to begin to make a difference. Your statements about the size or your population and the lengthy history actually work against you. You see if everyone, or half, or 25% of the people here did one good thing for the environment, it would have an immediate impact. You are truly one of the most helpless, stupid, backwards and racist people I have ever encountered. Localla, again, your hatred for all things "not Chinese" has enabled you to make yet another assinine post.
I agree with some of the things giadrosich said. There is little environmental awareness within the bulk of the local population. BUT there is a large amount of recycling happening not because it is the right thing to do but because there are so many people who eek out an existence by collecting or sorting through other peoples rubbish and selling whatever can be turned into cash. This only further breeds apathy in the populace as the results of their poor habits are regularly cleaned up. This is only applicable to rubbish though and can be handled in the way I have explained. What can't be fixed as easily is the effects of airbourne pollutants, chemicals, pollution of waterways, dust control, overuse of motor vehicles etc. Their are no orange vests around to clean up this mess and it will only improve with greater education, goverment regulation and the resultant cost increase of products effected by these controls.
I've actually seen the mother and child throwing the wrapper on the ground at the same time as if it were some kind of game to see who can make the wrapper hit the ground first. I'm sure they recycle plastic bottles because they know there are people that collect those bottles daily for a living so they want to help them out. I haven't really seen many kids networks teaching what recycling is, but the only real littering I've seen is wrappers being thrown on the ground.
I wouldn't say all of them do. Some of them might but I don't think t.v. networks are doing a good job on educating this to the public. Plus, if you have a parent who is littering the child will follow behind and do exactly what their parent is doing.
Considering the bins are both labeled general waste and recyclable (Beijing) but people still mix it up.
But the person who collects the rubbish dumps it in the same waste disposal carriage which then gets sorted out at the tip i assume. Then as people have said people do collect the glass and plastic bottles for some extra cash.
