Trash Talk Asia: from Seoul to Shanghai (day 6)

I was a little nervous about carrying a bag of trash into the People's Republic of China. Turned out ok, and the customs didn't even notice (or likely care). My customs form if you want to see it.

Airline food. I hadn't planned on eating on the plane, but a mental slip in simply accepting what the attendant was asking me (in korean) changed this. So I was faced with, for the first time ever, eating an entire meal on an airplane. The photos speak for themselves here, so I'll just add some color along the way.

Accept your fate. You are going to eat this.

food contents: raw salmon, cherry tomato, lemon slice, wheat roll with 1 packet of butter and 1 tube of korean spicy paste, something with "beef", orange juice, and a small doughy pastry for dessert.
other items: paper napkin, stainless steel silverware, sugar, creamer, salt and pepper, hand wipes, and a toothpick

I just want to point out that is seriously way too much butter and paste on my roll.

Florida? There must be oranges closer than Florida. If not, don't serve me orange juice.

Finished! No photoshopping!

And the waste...

Most of these items are recyclable, but that's still a lot of trash. I even nabbed the placemat, which definitely isn't. The attendant was very confused and tried to give me more placemats as souvenirs I'm guessing.

What this meal isn't doing: reducing waste (over abundance of food), reducing packaging, using renewable resources (styrofoam placemat), supporting local markets (florida oj), etc. As I said there are a lot of recyclables in our day-to-day lives. Choosing to go out of our way to recycle is another story. And eco-efficiency, or creating less of an environmental impact, via recycling only goes so far. When we look at this on a larger scale, the more progressive argument is for eco-effectiveness, or crade-to-cradle design. That is, making processes and products that do no harm to begin with or give back more than they take away.

In Shanghai now...now we'll start to see similarities and differences in the public systems and the culture of trash. Shanghai is often referred to as the Paris or New York of the East. What I've seen here so far is such a mix of old and new that make it a fascinating study of how cultures change, what influences that change, and how people and organizations can better shape the growth. Among other things, Saturday I'm going to view the new Urban Planning Museum with its vision for Shanghai in 2020. I'll be on the lookout for the trashcan and landfill of the future.

-Brandon Edwards