By Qiu Quanlin (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-10 07:06

GUANGZHOU: It is not often one sees a person in uniform on the streets buying scrap metal.

But Huang Shide, who has been engaged in waste collection for years in this southern city, is now often seen, wearing a blue uniform and riding a yellow pedicab in Shiling Town in Huadu District.

"I joined the unified waste collection team recently after I had been told that all of us independent collectors must join," Huang, 45, said.

He is just one of thousands of waste collectors that have been incorporated into a "unified team" by the Guangzhou Supply and Marketing Cooperative in the last two years.

Sources with the cooperative said more independent scrap collectors in the urban areas will be asked to join the unified team.

In Huadu District, which is being used as experiment, more than 1,000 collectors, accounting for nearly half of the district's total, have joined the team since 2005.

"The move is to regulate the waste collection market," Yang Fuheng, director of the supply and marketing cooperative center in Shiling Town, said.

He said all collectors affiliated with the unified team can only purchase scrap in specified areas and sell it to designated shops.

The pedicabs are all painted in a uniform color, with serial and complaint telephone numbers on them.

If they are found to be trading in contraband goods it is easy for the public to inform the authorities.

According to the recycling resource department, Guangzhou currently has more than 5,000 recycling plants employing about 100,000 people.

But about half of the them are not licensed.

"These unlicensed plants are the major cause of the contraband trade. To combat this problem, we plan to set up more licensed recycling plants," the official said.

(China Daily 08/10/2007 page5)