CHANGSHA - For villagers in a poverty-stricken region in central China's Hunan Province, there are many more important things their elected lawmaker can do than telling them how to deal with their garbage.However, for the past five years, Dai Hairong, a deputy to the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, dedicated herself to finding a solution to the garbage problem that has plagued her otherwise picturesque hometown.Her effort started from an inspection tour years ago to Hunan's Pinghushan national nature reserve.While marveling at the natural beauty of the reserve, she was surprised by how polluted it was: garbage filled up a scenic natural pit, and piles of fermented trash on the roadside caught fire, giving off strong smelling smoke.Dai vowed to wage war on garbage, an environmental tumor that she believed she had the responsibility to help eradicate.But many villagers and officials thought Dai had picked the wrong fight. In their mind, economic development should be the top priority for a lawmaker privileged of having a say in national meetings.Garbage disposal is certainly no trivial or household matter, Dai said. It is a difficult problem that the world today needs to tackle head-on.The garbage problem is getting worse, but we don't even know how to deal with it. We can't just sit back and give in, she said.After two years' research, she concluded that due to the vastness of China's rural areas, collecting garbage and then shipping it away for disposal was too costly. Villagers needed to sort it at home and dispose or recycle it as close by as possible.She then began her lobbying efforts, raising the issue whenever she could at meetings with local officials, and looking for sponsors willing to give garbage sorting a try. She also repeatedly made proposals on the issue at legislative meetings.In 2015, her determined efforts finally caught the attention of officials with China's Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ministry. They realized that the 40-year-old woman was adamant about making a difference and would not take no for an answer.They soon sent an expert team to Dai's county and helped her devise a plan that was logistically feasible and economically viable.They agreed that household garbage such as kitchen and restroom waste could be processed at home, and plastic garbage and glassware should be sorted out and then shipped to nearby recycle stations.They also worked out that one recycle station should be set up for every 500 villagers, which would achieve the highest utilization rate. And it was most economical for a truck to carry 30 tons of recyclables in each trip.In 2015, with a detailed plan in hand, Dai picked Dasheng Village as a trial site and began to promote a garbage sorting system. All she needed now was the cooperation of villagers.Hearing about Dai's plan, a local official said bluntly, You cannot count on ordinary rural woman to separate wet garbage from dry. We are not that advanced yet.The official was not entirely wrong. Even in China's first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, sorting garbage is considered a troublesome practice that is yet fully adopted by city-dwellers. Promoting it among rural Chinese proved to be a much more difficult task, as they are often less inclined to change the way they go about their everyday life.Dai did not give up easily. At one meeting with the villagers, She tried to highlight the economic incentive of garbage sorting.Wasted plastic film can be sold at 700 yuan ($107) per tonne, but will be worth nothing if not sorted, she said.Dai also warned villagers against the danger of burning unsorted trash, which may produce substances that cause cancer.We are willing to do garbage sorting, because we do not want to live in a village full of dust and garbage for the rest of our lives, said Wu Xianhao, a villager in Dasheng. We just did not know how to do it before.Now, three years into the trial program, Dai has found that villagers have become more environmentally conscious. They use less plastic cups and tablecloths during banquets and often volunteer to collect garbage in the mountains.To fight against garbage, we should never give up or give in, Wu told Dai. cool wristbandswide rubber bandscustom rubber bandslivestrong braceletevent wristbands uk24hourwristbandsbat fidget spinnerwristbands online
International experts have refuted a claim the Falun Gong cult has long made that China harvests organs from its practitioners, saying that the accusation is made for political reasons. "The Falun Gong fabricated the stories purely for political objectives," said Campbell Fraser, an expert on human organ trade from Griffith University, Australia. "It really makes people angry. Organ transplant is for giving life, and it is a beautiful thing, not for political objectives," Fraser said on Saturday at the China Organ Donation and Transplantation Conference in Kunming, Yunnan province Health officials and experts from China and abroad attended the meeting. "They have actually falsified data, I have no doubt about that at all," Fraser said. "I haven't found any evidence whatsoever that there has ever been a Falun Gong practitioner who had been executed and had organs removed." "We cannot let cults stand in our way. Intimidation and harassment can never win," he said. Fraser said he has met Falun Gong practitioners in places such as Australia, Taipei and New York, and when he would try to talk to a practitioner, the Epoch Times, the cult's newspaper, always would insist that one of its people must be present. The newspaper's representatives gave practitioners a printed letter to read out saying things like they had been detained and tested for forced organ donation in China, he said, and they didn't even understand what they were reading. The cult is using these people for anti-China political objectives. Falun Gong practitioners don't understand about organ harvesting, and they are being told what to say by a group of primarily US-based political activists who try to destabilize the Chinese government, Fraser said. China banned the Falun Gong as a cult in 1999, accusing it of disguising itself as a religious group to brainwash practitioners, taking money from them, and even encouraging them to engage in self-immolation. Philip O'Connell, former president of The Transplantation Society, said the Falun Gong accusations are groundless and many organ donation and transplant experts do not believe such accusations. Last year, 4,080 people in China donated organs after death, and 13,000 transplant surgeries were performed in China, in both cases the second highest number in the world, Guo Yanhong, of the National Health and Family Planning Commission' Bureau of Medical Administration, said at the conference. Marti Manyalich president of the International Society for Organ Donation and Procurement, predicted that by 2020, China will be the top country in the world in the number of donors and that it will be self-sufficient in organ transplants by 2030.
