Xiwushan Village, Tonglu County, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, east China - Recent
1. Various of villagers bringing bags of garbage to exchange station
2. Villagers signing for exchange garbage for household items
3. Staffer giving out household items to villager
4. Various of staffer counting garbage objects
5. Kid disposing of garbage objects into waste bin
6. SOUNDBITE (Chinese, dubbed in English) villager from Tonglu County (name not given):
"Less exposed garbage means fewer bugs and mosquitoes. I feel fresh living here."
7. SOUNDBITE (Chinese, dubbed in English) villager from Tonglu County (name not given):
"The exchange station works well. You don't see many cigarette butts on the streets anymore."
8. Various of villagers bringing bags of garbage to exchange station
9. Staffer counting garbage objects
10. SOUNDBITE (Chinese, dubbed in English) Xu Wen, secretary of CPC Jiuxian district committee:
"The villagers don't actually care how much these goods cost or how good they are. They have been impressed by and have benefited from the changes to the environment. No more smelly garbage. Instead, they get fresh air and clean streets. That is why they are happy to cooperate and continue to do so."
11. Automatic garbage bins
12. Various of villagers disposing of bags of garbage into automatic garbage bins
13. SOUNDBITE (Chinese, dubbed in English) Ren Hanbin, program manager, Zhejiang Sanitation Co., Ltd.:
"All the devices are connected to our control center, so we are able to find out how much trash this neighborhood creates every day, especially decomposable garbage. This way we can help local authorities find out how much organic trash they can reduce by decomposing and reusing it."
14. Fertilizer factory for further processing
15. Various of fertilizer production in workshop
16. SOUNDBITE (Chinese, dubbed in English) Zhu Hua, secretary of CPC Tonglu County committee:
"The environmental protection industry should form its own ecology. This requires a sound industrial chain, value chain, and service chain, such as trash recycling, processing, and marketing in this case."
17. Workers sorting through bags of fertilizer
18. Bags of fertilizer

Both the concept and practice of waste sorting are arriving at rural China, where garbage used to be a bigger problem. Now with due publicity and incentives of trade-offs, rural residents in east China's Zhejiang Province are including waste sorting into their habitual chores.

For residents in this Xiwushan Village of Tonglu County, it's becoming their habit to go to the small trade-off station every 10 days to exchange recyclable and hard-to-decompose and eye-sore garbage for small daily necessities for free, say, 80 used batteries for a bar of soap, or 300 cigarette butts for one cigarette lighter.

"Less exposed garbage means fewer bugs and mosquitoes. I feel fresh living here," said one Xiwushan villager.

Most surprised were local government officials and local residents themselves who were not at all sure about the outcome of this pilot project of waste sorting in villages.

"The exchange station works well. You don't see many cigarette butts on the streets anymore," said another Xiwushan villager.

Starting with one trade-off station in just one village, there are now more than 100 trade-off stations in as many villages in Tonglu County. And local villagers seem to care more about their environment rather than the petty trade-off things.

"The villagers don't actually care how much these goods cost or how good they are. They have been impressed by and have benefited from the changes to the environment. No more smelly garbage. Instead, they get fresh air and clean streets. That is why they are happy to cooperate and continue to do so," said Xu Wen, secretary of CPC Jiuxian district committee.

Waste sorting has by now been upgraded with ID card scanning technologies to simplify the process and to save up token credits for either daily necessities or payment for utilities like electricity or running water. The scanning also feeds big data back to local related authorities.

"All the devices are connected to our control center, so we are able to find out how much trash this neighborhood creates every day, especially decomposable garbage. This way we can help local authorities find out how much organic trash they can reduce by decomposing and reusing it," said Ren Hanbin, program manager of Zhejiang Sanitation Co., Ltd..

Recycling and reusing waste is now the highest level of waste sorting and one of the principles guiding China's garbage treatment.

Previously, organic trash from kitchens were lasting nuisances in villages; but now, mixed with livestock waste, such trash can be processed into organic fertilizers which find their way to local agri-markets.

With treatments like recycling trash into fertilizers, Zhu Hua's county has reduced garbage burning by an average of 70 tons per day. That, in turn, has helped reduce secondary air pollution to bring down greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere.

The use of organic fertilizers over chemical ones also reduces underground water pollution.

"The environmental protection industry should form its own ecology. This requires a sound industrial chain, value chain, and service chain, such as trash recycling, processing, and marketing in this case," said Zhu Hua, secretary of CPC Tonglu County committee.

While back at the trade-off stations in Tonglu villages, rural residents can now take pride in what they do with waste sorting for themselves and for everybody else.