The Truth About “Not Enough Waste to Burn”

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Foodthink Says

Since early June, a video titled “From Cities Besieged by Waste to Not Enough Waste to Burn: China’s Speed Leaves the West Dumbfounded” has swept the internet. Tossing unsightly rubbish into a furnace and burning it to your heart’s content, then harnessing the energy released to generate electricity – many people have cried out in excitement at such a “perfect” technological solution. And upon hearing that “incineration plants in Zhejiang and Shanghai have gone to other provinces and municipalities to compete for waste to burn,” quite a few people have started exclaiming: “This news really lets me buy over-packaged products without a guilty conscience – before, it was nothing but guilt.” There have even been utterly upside-down ideas such as “It’s time to call on everyone to throw out more rubbish” or “Forget waste sorting – just cart it all straight to the incinerators.” Given the breadth and intensity of the misleading impact of the video’s content, in Episode 51 of the Food Talk podcast we invited two seasoned professionals from the fields of waste management and environmental public-interest advocacy to discuss what is really behind the claim that “there is not enough waste to burn.” How, exactly, should we view waste incineration? What is its relationship with waste sorting and recycling? Can existing incineration safety technologies truly prevent the generation of dioxins, other toxic emissions and air pollutants? What are the hazards of plastic food packaging to human health? And how can each of us build our own relationship with waste, working together to create a “Zero-Waste Planet”?

This article has been adapted from the content of that podcast episode.

This Episode’s Guests

Mao Da

PhD in Environmental History, Chair of the Shenzhen Zero Waste Environmental Public Interest Development Centre and initiator of the “Toxic-Free Pioneer” campaign. For twenty years, has been involved in solid waste and environmental health projects across multiple environmental organisations. Their current work focuses on the sound management of chemicals, green e-commerce, addressing plastic waste pollution, and promoting zero waste principles in practice.

 

 

 

Sun Jinghua

Nature name “Lotus Pod”, Director of the Waste Reduction Project at Friends of Nature and Editor-in-Chief of the popular science book The Magic Book of Waste. For many years, has been deeply engaged in public education and science communication in the fields of waste reduction and sorting, zero waste in schools, and beyond.

 

 

 

Yu Yang

Foodthink editor, who recently has been pondering the toxic relationship between plastics and humans.

 

 

 

 

This Episode’s Host

Chang Tianle

Founding editor of Foodthink; convener of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market.

 

 

 

 

 

I. What Is Everyone So Excited About – “Not Enough Waste to Burn”?

Tianle: You may have noticed a video that went viral recently, claiming that China doesn’t have enough waste to burn. Some people then went on to say: if there isn’t enough waste to burn, shouldn’t we produce more rubbish just to keep these incineration plants running – does it really matter? Some even called it the best news they’d heard all year, a way to ease the guilt of generating waste. According to the data, as of 2023 China had built over 1,000 waste incineration power plants, with incineration throughput far exceeding the combined total of the United States, Japan and Europe. I’d like to ask the three of you: what are your thoughts on this topic that has exploded across the internet? Mao Da: Right off the bat, I fundamentally disagree with this video’s thesis. The blogger doesn’t truly understand waste incineration, nor does he grasp the full picture of waste management – incineration is just one technique and tool within that broader field. But looking at it from another angle, doesn’t this creator’s understanding of waste also reflect the mindset of the general public? For a long time, most people have been completely indifferent to waste. Then one day, a counter-intuitive claim appeared: waste is no longer besieging our cities – there isn’t enough to burn. Naturally, that grabs attention and spreads. Another reason is that the video deliberately ties itself to elements that stir national pride. And people may have long felt that waste sorting is hopelessly inefficient, so this video, framed around economic profit and efficiency, sends a clear signal: incineration isn’t just incredibly efficient – it makes money. All these factors combined made this video go massively viral.

Yu Yang: The blogger goes by “Keji Dasima“, I think – I even visited his homepage to have a look. He essentially approaches technology from an industrialist faction’s perspective, but apart from this “Not Enough Waste to Burn” video and another titled “AI Lasers Replace Pesticides”, his other videos haven’t gained much traction. The reason this video attracted so much attention, making a public long frustrated by waste management suddenly so approving of incineration, may be that incineration represents a blunt, one-size-fits-all solution – no matter what the substance, just throw it in the incinerator and burn it all away. There’s a kind of catharsis in that.

◉ Some netizens believe waste incineration technology is leading society “towards a cleaner, modernised future”. Source: screenshot from WeChat Channels
Tianle: Mao Da just mentioned that the public may be rather indifferent to the relationship between waste and themselves, but there are actually many ordinary people who care about environmental issues and are willing to put sustainability into practice in their daily lives. I know Friends of Nature has always encouraged the public to take an interest in environmental protection. Lotus Pod, could you tell us how this issue has been received within Friends of Nature’s community? Lotus Pod: I first came across this video on Weibo. I noticed that the people in the reposting chain were bloggers who generally take a constructive stance in their respective fields, yet they all liked this video – which surprised me quite a bit. Waste incineration is common knowledge within the environmental circle, but for the general public outside that field – even bloggers who are very knowledgeable in other areas – it’s easy to be swept along by public opinion.

Then on WeChat, many people messaged me privately: “Have you seen this video? Is it really true?” Quite a few of them had even attended our teacher training programme on waste and life. I told them: I’ve spent two or three days teaching you all for nothing – how have you forgotten even the basics? Think about our waste hierarchy: incineration ranks second from the bottom. It’s merely a marginally better option than landfill or indiscriminate dumping.

II. Is There Really Not Enough Waste to Burn?

Mao Da: Is it because there’s less waste that incinerators don’t have enough to burn? Not at all. In Beijing now, the estimated per-capita annual waste sent for incineration is over 200 kilograms. In Shanghai it’s more – around 290 kilograms or above per year. What does that mean in context? Compare it with Seoul, South Korea. Their zero-waste philosophy has been well implemented over the years, and today Seoul’s combined incineration and landfill figure is approximately 100 kilograms per capita per year. We generate too much waste, but what we have even more of is incinerators. There is now overcapacity among incineration plants. While maintaining a certain margin is reasonable, it has reached the point where they’re competing for waste, which is clearly unreasonable.

Tianle: Just by observing your own or others’ lifestyles – all those disposable cups for milk tea, the various plastic packaging from takeaway and courier deliveries – you can sense that the volume of waste people generate has been steadily increasing. So why has China built so many waste incinerators?

◉ Waste has become a challenge China must confront and address in its modernisation and urbanisation. The shock and fear engendered by the once-feared “Cities Besieged by Waste” prompted people to seek a solution that could tackle the waste problem quickly and efficiently. Source: still from the documentary Cities Besieged by Waste
Lotus Pod: In reality, there simply isn’t enough space for landfill. Over a decade ago, a famous documentary about Beijing being besieged by waste came out – if you’re not going to burn it, what do you do? Incineration was a forced response, something you could call a “technological advance”. But say you build three incinerators capable of burning the city’s entire waste stream, yet half of that waste is food waste or recyclables – then building just two incinerators would actually be sufficient.

III. Can Incinerators Control Dioxin Emissions?

Yu Yang: The video mentions that while waste incineration does produce dioxins, under existing incineration technology this carcinogen is broken down at temperatures of 1,100 degrees Celsius. Is that correct? Mao Da: This is exactly why I say the blogger doesn’t understand incineration. Yes, it’s over 1,000 degrees, and we do have real-time monitoring. But the conditions that lead to dioxin formation are numerous – it’s not just temperature. There are many factors we can’t see, such as incinerator ash not being cleaned out in time, which can also contribute to dioxin generation.

Lotus Pod: Friends ask me whether incineration can now fully control dioxin emissions, and whether real-time monitoring is maintained. I tell them: at most, a facility’s dioxin emissions are tested once a year. Can you really call that real-time monitoring?

Mao Da: In practice, to get a comprehensive and accurate picture of dioxin emissions from incineration, you need periodic or semi-continuous sampling and monitoring. But the legally mandated emission testing is just once a year; add voluntary monitoring on top of that, and at best you get three or four readings a year. In many places, facilities may be reluctant to carry out monitoring due to cost, or if monitoring does reveal problems, they stop doing it altogether. But if we look at the scientific literature, we find that dioxin accumulation in soils around certain incinerators is elevated compared to control sites, and in some areas the concentration of dioxins in the air is higher than expected.

Lotus Pod: In 2020, Friends of Nature sued an incinerator in Jiangsu called Daji over non-compliant pollution emissions, and we won the case. If we could use legal channels to address every incinerator that fails to meet emission standards, things would be better. China’s incineration technology has certainly improved on the safety front compared to over a decade ago, but the problem now is simply that there are too many incinerators.

◉ Distribution of waste-to-energy incineration plants in selected regions of China. Available data shows that as of 2023, China has built over 1,000 waste incineration power plants with 2,172 incinerators and an incineration capacity of approximately 1.11 million tonnes per day. This expansion means China’s waste incineration throughput far exceeds the combined total of the United States, Japan and Europe.” Source: Public Platform for Automatic Monitoring Data on Municipal Solid Waste Incineration Power Plants
Mao Da: In fact, the government has fulfilled its monitoring obligations within the regulatory framework. But that does not mean these emissions from incinerators can be guaranteed as safe, because the standards themselves need constant adjustment and improvement. When we first began addressing incineration emissions, the dioxin emission standard was 1 nanogram per cubic metre, but it couldn’t ensure public health and safety. So with public calls for reform and the industry’s own efforts, a few years later the standard was tightened to 0.1 nanograms. It’s an ongoing process, but neither can we say the current standard is truly safe – it’s merely a balance.

IV. Why Isn’t Incineration a Panacea?

Tianle: I’d like to ask Dr Mao Da to explain to us why incineration is the last resort in waste management. Mao Da: Let me start with the 3R priority hierarchy in waste management: reduce (minimising waste), reuse (reusing), and recycle (recovery). First, reduce – preventing waste in the first place is, of course, the best option. Next is reuse: extending the life of existing items reduces the amount discarded or abandoned, which in turn reduces waste. Then comes recycle: finding ways to circulate waste back into production, such as turning used paper and plastic into new products. Only when there truly is no other option does waste enter end-of-pipe disposal such as incineration.

◉ The priority hierarchy for waste management. Source: Mao Da

Tianle: And there are always materials that aren’t really suited to incineration, such as glass or food waste.

Mao Da: Yes. Waste incineration burns carbon-containing materials and releases them directly as greenhouse gas emissions. We all know how frequent extreme weather events have become. Food waste is the last thing that should be burned – most of what we eat is carbohydrates, and once burned, it turns into greenhouse gases. Plastics and timber are also carbon-rich, so burning them releases greenhouse gases too. Suppose we skip all the sorting and recycling we’ve discussed, buy freely, use freely, discard freely, and send everything to incinerators or landfills – the consequences are something we simply cannot afford.

◉ Pollutants potentially generated by waste incineration. Source: Tianxia Wufen
Tianle: From a climate change perspective, waste management touches every one of us. Some new data suggests that people born after 2020 are very likely to experience extreme heatwaves within their lifetimes. Lotus Pod: Glass bottles are something that really gives me headaches. Beijing is relatively well off – the locally common brands like Yanjing, Beibingyang and Sanyuan milk all have deposit-return schemes. But at the moment only local brands offer this kind of service. Some brands aren’t local; for instance, the milk I see in Suzhou is New Hope, which is produced in Hangzhou and transported to Suzhou. The glass bottles can’t be collected back, so they essentially become single-use – an enormous waste of resources.

Tianle: Exactly. I’ve noticed that the waste collectors in my residential compound don’t take glass bottles either.

Mao Da: Yet incinerators can’t burn glass bottles either. Incineration isn’t a panacea – when we deal with different materials, we have to consider whether they’re even suitable for burning. With glass, the question should be how to improve its reuse and extend its working life – that means returning bottles to the factory for refilling. If you check the outside of a glass bottle for wear marks, you’ll know for certain it’s been reused.

Tianle: Glass is widely regarded as a far safer food container than plastic, so it’s a real shame it has such a significant drawback.

Lotus Pod: It really comes down to the fact that new glass is so cheap to produce that manufacturers would rather use a fresh bottle than have one collected back, because the cost of processing reclaimed glass can be very high.

V. V. Health Risks of Plastic Food Packaging

Tianle: When people believe waste incineration lets them produce rubbish guilt-free, they actually overlook the fact that a great deal of waste comes from the plastic packaging on our food – and those plastics are harmful to our health too. I won’t even mention packaged foods – go to a wet market or supermarket and you’ll find fruit and vegetables wrapped in layer after layer of plastic. With plastic so ubiquitous in our food, how safe is it really?

◉ The many fruits and vegetables in excessive plastic wrapping you’ll often see in fresh-food supermarkets. Source: Foodthink
Mao Da: When it comes to plastic in food, microplastics are probably the term people have been hearing about most often lately – a new study pops up every few days and, naturally, people feel alarmed. But even if microplastics really are a problem, the world simply cannot give up plastic packaging, so the public gradually becomes desensitised. When these microplastics can penetrate into so many of our organs, right down to the cellular level, the effects will be unpredictable. If we wait until then to stop ingesting microplastics, it will be far too late. Tianle: I’m the same – I love drinking Earl Grey in the morning, but it’s hard to find loose-leaf tea in China. Ever since I learned about the dangers of microplastics, I take my tea bags apart and drink them loose. Many products that claim to be biomass packaging made from corn starch, and those biodegradable PLA straws you see in bubble tea shops – they actually contain a great many chemical additives to bind them together or alter their properties.

Mao Da: PLA is a relatively biodegradable material, but it may still need additives to give it certain functional properties, including substances that are difficult to break down or that carry endocrine-disrupting and carcinogenic risks. Additives in food packaging can contaminate the food itself. Researchers in North America have run experiments of this kind quite often: order Western fast food – which relies on single-use plastic packaging – every day for several weeks, and you’ll find that plastic-related additives enter your body in far greater quantities than through a normal diet.

Compared with microplastics, the health hazards of chemical additives are more clearly established in the scientific literature. Certain substances with definite risks are deliberately added in. For example, phthalate plasticisers– their most obvious effect is endocrine disruption, acting essentially as synthetic oestrogen. When children are exposed to these plastic additives, girls can develop precocious puberty and boys can suffer abnormal development of their reproductive organs. We know a doctor at a maternity and child health hospital in Hangzhou who has observed that the rise in boys with hypospadias in recent years may be related to this exposure. And then there is bisphenol A, which everyone is familiar with by now – it too is an endocrine disruptor that affects women’s reproductive health.

Tianle: I think breaking free of our dependence on plastic packaging is like quitting smoking or drinking – everyone understands the reasoning, but the distance between awareness and action is enormous. What’s more, the health impacts of these plastics creep up on you so gradually.

Mao Da: Exactly. Today’s parents know to choose bisphenol A-free baby bottles, but there are other risks we aren’t aware of. Take type 3 PVC, for instance – commonly found in mooncake trays and egg trays – it’s the form of PVC most dependent on additives. People may not realise either that in the industrial production of ready meals, the plastic pipes used during processing can also leach harmful substances.

If you enjoy baking, take note: those cheap mooncake trays you find online may well be made of PVC. Cling film is another area where PVC and non-PVC products coexist. The government has stipulated that PVC must not be used for plastics that come into contact with meat, oil or fat, but how is an ordinary consumer supposed to tell the difference in daily life? It’s just too difficult.

VI. A New Kind of Plastic Pollution from Takeaway Packaging

Tianle: Yu Yang spent a few months delivering takeaways. At the time, did you feel the volume of plastic takeaway packaging was a problem? Yu Yang: Honestly, when I was delivering orders, the thing I worried about most was whether the food was sealed tightly enough. For riders or restaurant owners, everyone wants the meal to reach the customer in perfect condition. So this is the dilemma of ordering takeaways – you inevitably face an enormous volume of plastic packaging, including plastic containers and cling film wound around the lids.

Then there’s the issue of single-use cutlery. Every time I order a takeaway, I request no cutlery, yet the restaurant sends it anyway. It’s probably because restaurants are so busy during the midday rush that they don’t bother checking the notes – one glance could delay packing an entire order, or they worry that not including cutlery might invite a bad review, so they simply apply a standard approach.

◉ Takeaway waste, found everywhere in everyday life. Source: Foodthink

Lotus Pod: Nowadays, takeaway orders typically come in composite bags. The government has banned businesses from providing non-biodegradable plastic bags – the old-style carrier bags with looped handles that used to be everywhere have essentially been prohibited. If a shop provides them, they face fines. So what do businesses use as replacements? One option is non-woven fabric; the other is biodegradable bags. But biodegradable bags are soft and flimsy – they tear easily or the bag tips over, causing the food to spill. That’s when composite bags emerged to fill the gap – they offer structural support and look good, but from a waste management perspective, composite bags are far worse than ordinary plastic bags. Waste collectors don’t even accept them, because composite materials contain layers of plastic, non-woven fabric, and sometimes even aluminium foil, making it extremely difficult to separate them for recycling. Non-woven fabric bags, on the other hand, are made of a uniform material and are comparatively easier to process.

Tianle: So today, takeaways not only cause an overabundance of conventional plastics but also generate a whole new category of packaging waste that’s extremely difficult to process.

Mao Da: Exactly. In another sense, they are “new pollutants” – since they are so hard to recycle, all that’s left is to send them to be burned.

Lotus Pod: I’m someone born in the 1970s who grew up in the hutongs of Beijing. Back then, taking out the rubbish had its own name – “dao tu”, literally “tipping the dirt”, because the waste was mainly ash and slag of that kind. Even as a child, I knew things like glass bottles and toothpaste tubes were recyclable. Now the range of waste keeps getting “more diverse” – more and more types of packaging simply cannot be recycled, and even the low-value recyclables that might still be recoverable find no takers.

◉ Unrecoverable plastic packaging waste eventually scatters into mountains and rivers, and may travel back up the food chain to our dinner tables – and ultimately into our bodies. Source: Mao Da
Lotus Pod: So far, Xiamen has done the best job with low-value recyclables. Plastic packaging is collected by the municipality every day as a standard service, and dedicated companies ensure the downstream processing is in place. Xiamen also recovers glass and ceramics separately. In most of the country, ceramics are classified as “residual waste”, but only in Xiamen are they collected alongside glass and recycled into building materials or used for road surfacing. In Xiamen residential compounds, I noticed there are roughly three times as many blue recycling bins as grey residual waste bins, and the glass-and-ceramics bins genuinely contain only glass and ceramics. I really admire Xiamen’s model – I’d give their local government a big thumbs-up.

VII. Farewell to Simplistic and Crude Waste Incineration

Mao Da: In China, incinerators have competed one another into the ground until the processing fee per tonne of waste has been driven down to as little as a dozen or twenty yuan. I believe the government needs to rein in this race to the bottom, because it drags down the overall cost of waste treatment to a level nowhere near enough to cover the real cost of the waste businesses or individuals generate. Currently, China’s taxes and fees for processing a tonne of waste are very low – around 100 yuan, or at most two or three hundred. At a comparable level of consumption, the Taiwan region charges at least four or five hundred yuan per tonne, Japan 800, and Europe 1,000 – and that is a normal fee level. Professor Song Guojun of Renmin University of China once calculated the total social cost of waste treatment, adding in health costs – for instance, the cancer risks posed by incineration pollutants, converted into economic losses through modelling – bringing the figure to roughly 2,000 yuan per tonne. Only when these social costs are factored in will all parties in society have a genuine incentive to drive waste reduction and reuse.

Tianle: When I think about this, it feels deeply unfair. Take our Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market – we’re a small, non-profit-making venture, yet we willingly invest time and labour in cutting down on plastic and promoting reuse. Big businesses, though, won’t even bother.

◉ To encourage a reduction in single-use plastic packaging, the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market has set up a “Bulk Section” where customers must bring their own containers. Source: Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market

Tianle: We never hand out new bags, and we encourage customers to bring theirs back – we collect them and offer them free of charge to other shoppers. On top of that, some of the egg farmers at the Organic Market use cardboard trays and rice husks for packaging, which are very easy to recycle. Of course, some farmers still use polystyrene foam cups to hold the eggs inside cardboard boxes. Even so, as long as customers return the packaging to the market, we save it all up and post it back to the farmers for reuse. It really comes down to whether the seller cares and is willing to invest a certain amount – packing is a labour cost, and sending it back is a delivery cost.

◉ The second-hand bag collection area. Source: Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market

Tianle: By comparison, major chain supermarkets like Hema and JD.com could easily set up a recycling area to collect the many unnecessary boxes that come with shopping. If those boxes are clean, the supermarket could return them to the manufacturers for reuse – at scale, that’s an economy of scale in itself. Fresh food e-commerce platforms like Hema and Xiaoxiang today essentially all have their own delivery fleets. They could simply take the bags back while handing over the goods to the customer. I recall that SF Express has a cold-chain service where the delivery van takes the insulated cold-chain boxes back with it – a really good approach.

Lotus Pod: Yes, you could even consider charging a one-yuan deposit per box. Customers could open the boxes on the spot after their purchase, or bring them back a few days later, or even have the delivery rider collect them on a subsequent visit – the deposit would be refunded either way. Friends of Nature published an article on 30 March that explored some ‘creative ideas’ for reducing packaging on fresh food platforms. For instance, scheduling the delivery time in advance to ensure the customer is home, so the rider can hand the items over directly without needing a bag.

Some of Hema’s policies are unreasonable and need to change: they stipulate that any online purchase must be bagged – even if you collect it in store – with a one-yuan packaging fee. You can apply for a refund, but many people don’t know that rule exists. Some voucher designs are problematic too – certain vouchers can only be used online, effectively forcing consumers to place orders through the app. And then there’s the sheer number of boxes at Hema – the name is so apt, it’s nothing but “boxes”. You can’t opt out of receiving them, you can’t return them after you’ve bought, and even if you open them on the spot and hand them straight back, they still just end up thrown away.

◉ The “Postman Slow Delivery” initiative, launched by Free U Nature, uses cycling to keep second-hand bags flowing to businesses in need, thereby reducing the consumption of plastic packaging. Source: Free U Nature
Mao Da: From a public management perspective, much of what we do now is about regulating “process” – for example, requiring people to sort their waste or prescribing what businesses must do. The problem is, this approach often ends up piling the burden onto small traders and small producers, while the large companies that actually generate the most waste find it all too easy to “comply”. In reality, they are responsible for the lion’s share of waste at source; it’s just that the system hasn’t turned the whip on them. So we still need “target-based” management: whoever generates the most waste – whether an individual or a business – should pay more. The country is already heading in that direction, it’s just that implementation hasn’t been thorough enough, probably because of concerns about upsetting ordinary people.

VIII. Building Your Own Connection to Waste

Tianle: Finally, I’d like us to talk about what each of us can do to create less waste and live better, while looking after our own health, the health of others, and the environment. Lotus Pod: Source reduction is what matters most. In truth, any bag you use over and over again becomes an eco-bag. Try to cut down on takeaway and online shopping too – if you really have no time to cook, opt for eating in at a restaurant instead. And then there’s bubble tea: it comes with so much unnecessary packaging. Have less of it, or bring your own cup.

Mao Da: What we advocate is Zero waste – a simple motto: buy better, buy less, use longer. Of course, waste will always be produced, and recycling can solve a great deal. Leaders of organisations and workplaces can take the lead with small experiments and build a little system that pulls everyone along. I know a sanitation services company that set up a tiny vegetable garden on their office rooftop, creating a small composting loop on site. Friends of Nature and many fellow organisations can offer technical support, so you don’t have to start from scratch. And please consider supporting our environmental groups – Foodthink, Friends of Nature, and Shenzhen Zero Waste. Become Monthly donors, and we’ll help you turn ideas into reality.

The last point is about building a personal connection with your own waste. Our most primal concern has always been ‘I don’t want rubbish piling up on my doorstep.’ But now that waste is whisked away so quickly, we forget the value of sanitation workers. We need to recognise that waste isn’t somebody else’s problem – it is closely tied to our own lives.

Yu Yang: I agree with Mao Da – we need to build a connection between waste and daily life, but making that connection stick really does face difficulties. Take ordering takeaway, for instance. We’ve interviewed people who don’t order on a whim; it’s woven into their whole work and life rhythm. Many people work overtime after their shift ends, so exhausted and pressed for time that they’ll casually place a takeaway order on the metro. Unless that rhythm changes, changing behaviour is very hard.

Another thought I had was about reuse. At the moment, people see reuse as rather avant-garde – turning scraps of old fabric into a backpack is one form of it, and in the art world there’s even collage art built on the same principle. But when I was little, that’s exactly how my grandmother patched my clothes. For traditional ways of living, this kind of reuse was simply life itself. So I think if we can truly weave the idea of recycling into everyday life – make it an unconscious habit – the shift in what we do might become much easier.

◉ This backpack is made from discarded bicycle inner tubes. Environmental ideas are expressed through art pieces like this, yet they drift further and further from ordinary daily life. Photography: Yu Yang

Compiled by Li Ye |

Edited by Yu Yang

Published by Foodthink