Economist Viv Brown, poses the question: ‘What is rubbish?’. He says: 'One answer is that it is something that has no value…. It is what nobody wants, so it is worthless….Items have value because people value them…. Similarly, if rubbish has no value, this is because people disvalue it (not because the item is in and of itself worthless). So looking at rubbish … can tell us something about the social processes that are involved in valuing, or in this case, devaluing, an item.' (Vivianne Brown, Rubbish Society: Affluence, Waste and Values, 2009, p.105).

What may be labeled ‘rubbish’ in the West, represents a resource for other less wealthy communities around the world.

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In many Chinese cities street recycling is a way of life. Here ‘waste’ is a means for people to earn money to live. If they work hard (and are lucky) they make more money than if they had not migrated from their villages. Many cities have a steady supply of materials such as paper, corrugated card, plastics and metals. These are collected for recycling (that is, making into new items with a similar function). The recyclers will spend their entire day travelling around neighborhoods collecting and buying materials. Once they have collected as much as they can carry, they then take their load to depots where the waste is weighed out and money changes hands. In many cases the people collecting waste are rural migrants who have moved towards China’s coastal cities in search of a better life for themselves.

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