For residents of Nuanshui Village in Jiangxi Province, plastic bags, beverage cans and cigarette ends are not waste but treasure that can be exchanged for goods at a "waste bank."
Wang Xiuying, 65, separated her garbage into four green dustbins at the waste bank, which opened in April as Chinese villages work to improve their waste management.
Wang heard that villagers can collect trash and deposit it at the bank in exchange for credit towards items including soap, tissues, rice wine, pencils and notebooks.
Eighty used plastic bags or 40 batteries or 200 cigarette ends can be exchanged for a bar of soap.
Wang did not believe it at first. "How can useless trash be exchanged for something useful?" she wondered.
She collected 160 used plastic bags from her home and street, brought them to the bank, and got two bars of soap.
The situation in Nuanshui is typical of large parts of rural China. It lacks funds for organized garbage collection, and residents are not in the habit of disposing of waste in bins. Littering and fly-tipping are common.
Now however, many villagers like Wang have stopped tossing out trash indiscriminately and are even starting to compete with each other to see how much garbage they can pick up from the streets.
More than 500 residents, around a sixth of Nuanshui's population, have made deposits in the waste bank, collecting over 800 kg of household waste.
"The garbage in the bank will be properly disposed of or recycled," said Jiang Pengcheng, head of Longtoushan Town, which administers Nuanshui.
The system in this part of Jiangxi has great potential to be replicated elsewhere.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development estimates that China has a permanent rural population of 650 million. If they produce 0.5 kg of household waste per capita every day, around 110 million tonnes of trash will be generated every year. However, nearly 64 percent of rural China's trash is left untreated.
Jiang is realistic that the waste bank won't be able to solve all local problems with trash, but confident that "it can improve villagers' environmental awareness and reduce waste."
A small river runs through Nuanshui. "There used to be trash floating in the river and heaped along its banks," recalled resident Cheng Baoguang.
The village hired six cleaners at a cost of more than 100,000 yuan each year (1,524 U.S. dollars). "But it wasn't enough. The streets and river were covered with plastic bags and candy wrappers of every possible size and color. The cleaners would collect them one day and they would just be back again the next," Jiang said.
He said the waste bank is a cost-effective supplement to organized garbage collection as it only costs several thousand yuan to operate it each month.
Ma Xuesong, a researcher with the Jiangxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, agreed. "The purpose of the bank is to encourage villagers to change their old habits," Ma said.
As Chinese authorities prioritize environmental protection, local governments may be empowered to take more action.
Longtoushan plans to open waste banks in all villages it administers.
Wang Xiuying is envious of one neighbor who managed to collect 2,000 cigarette ends in recent days and exchange them for 10 bars of soap.
"I will not be throwing away garbage willy-nilly in the future. Trash can be turned into treasure," Wang said.
