Waste disposal is a difficult, long-standing issue of sustainable living and growth, especially in large cities like Shanghai. To do your part in a bustling metropolis that produces over 10,000 tonnes of trash every day, Here are several simple ways you can reduce your own contributions to this problem.

Do It Yourself

Everyone knows of the split rubbish bins found all over the city, one side marked ‘recyclables’ and the other marked ‘other waste’, although it is not clear how many people actually pay attention to this distinction. For those who would like to see their recyclables return directly to their source, there are options outside the rarely-followed municipal trash cans. A public hotline run by the New Jinhua Rubbish Recycling Centre offers to pick up recyclable waste from your home in Changning, Hongkou, Putuo and Luwan districts. New Jinhua comes to your doorstep to collect anything from everyday materials, such as newspapers and plastic bottles, to larger items, like old furniture, used batteries and broken appliances. This service is currently only available in Chinese, but offers a very convenient way to properly dispose of your recyclable items. In fact, you get a small return on your items – RMB 0.2 per glass bottle – which makes this choice potentially lucrative as well as environmentally conscious.

New Jinhua Rubbish Recycling Centre. Tel: 6234 8790 or 400 620 9500

Water Bottles

With sweltering summer heat blanketing the city, many Shanghai residents will turn to constantly purchasing ice-cold bottles of water and juice to keep cool. This behaviour leads to an unnecessary amount of plastic produced when sustained over an entire season. A better way to avoid this consumption is to have a multi-litre water jug regularly delivered to your home. In tandem with a functioning water-cooler, this method will save money while cutting down on plastic consumption. Use this to fill up your own aluminium or hard-plastic bottle on a daily basis and enjoy cold water all summer without having to run to the store every couple hours.

Shopping Bags

Although liang jiao isn’t enough to hurt your wallet, the price of a plastic shopping bag is increased by the strain it puts on the environment; this plastic will take hundreds of years to decompose in a landfill. One manner of avoiding this dilemma is to buy your own reusable shopping bags for everyday use. Purchasing a canvas shopping bag will provide you with a sturdy and reliable alternative to that cheap white plastic, and save you the worry of a bag breaking under the weight of your groceries. You can find several varieties of canvas bags at your nearest City Shop or Parkson supermarket. If you are ever forced to splurge on a plastic bag for any reason, bring it home and use it as a small trash bag to at least get another use out of it.

Clothes

Got a stack of old clothes collecting dust in the back of your closet? Before you throw them in the trash for lack of a local thrift store, try taking your unused items to a clothing swap, a new event in the city. Cotton’s on Xinhua Lu hosted their first Shanghai Closet Swap last month, organized by vintage clothing store William the Beekeeper. Patrons dropped off their old clothes at the Beekeeper and then attended the Swap with cocktails in hand to sort through others’ rarely-worn outfits. Keep an eye on TALK and the Beekeeper’s website for the next scheduled Closet Swap, bound to be a semi-regular affair.

William the Beekeeper: 84 Fenyang Lu, near Fuxing Lu. Tel: 131 6724 3796. Web: www.williamthebeekeeper.com