Fishing community pulls plastic from its waters

Fei Haiping, a 58-year-old fisherman with over 20 years of experience, has been an advocate of this cleaner approach when out at sea for years. "The sea looked bad with all the bottles floating around," he said.

Over the past decade, Fei has encouraged his fellow fishermen to keep garbage on board instead of tossing it into the water. "We are able to collect 100 to 200 plastic bottles during a single trip," he said.

Once back on shore, bags of collected plastics are brought to a building near the coast, where a group of women classify the plastic bottles based on colors and shapes.

Inside the building, colorful blocks of compressed plastic bottles pile up to the ceiling, with each block weighing around 35 kilograms. These sorted bottles will be shipped to recycling facilities, where they will be transformed into plastic pellets for a second life.

One of the women working there is Yang Shuwen, a 60-year-old local yusao. "These bottles are recycled into materials for clothing and stationery, which I think is very meaningful," she said. "My husband also knows where the plastics they collect end up."

Yang and the other women in their red volunteer vests work tirelessly in front of the building, sweating under the sun, sorting bottles suitable for recycling. According to Yang, they can sort 10 35-kg blocks of plastic bottles each day.

Working eight hours a day, four to five days a week, these women earn from 1,500 to 2,000 yuan ($206 to $275) per month for their efforts. The money comes from the sale of plastics to manufacturing companies, according to Hu.

"To be honest, the work is far from pleasant. We are here because we've volunteered to protect the marine environment," Hu said. "At the end of the day, we are dealing with garbage every day, and it gets smelly in the summer. Plus, we also need to follow strict classification requirements to ensure the waste is properly sorted for recycling."

In 2022, their volunteering work was officially included in the Little Blue House project, a joint effort to recycle ocean plastic in Zhejiang province, which involved collaboration among volunteers, fishermen, businesses and government agencies. This project has also been established in coastal Zhejiang cities such as Ningbo and Taizhou, where dozens of Little Blue Houses operate under the same recycling mechanism.