A little girl collects items continuously from huge piles of garbage while two younger boys look on. They eagerly ask the girl to give them some of her collection. In their hands are a bunch of needle tubes, which they take as toys.

This is a scene in the documentary “The Plastic Kingdom” by Wang Jiuliang, 39, which tells how plastic waste is imported from overseas into China, helping factory owners make profits while destroying the villages and people there.

It took Wang three years traveling and investigating plastic-recycling bases in China to complete the shooting, which began in 2011. The complete documentary is in the editing stage, and Wang expects to finish it this year. But a 26-minute version of the film recently released to the media has already astonished China and the world.

“I hope that the countries that export the plastic waste to China will see the documentary, so as to help solve the problem from the source,” says Wang, a Shandong native now living in Beijing.

Plastic, which signifies cheapness in English, seems a good metaphor for the fragile prosperity of the Chinese regions that earn their “economic progress” by sacrificing the environment and people’s health, making China a garbage dump of the world.

According to data from the US International Trade Commission, the trading volume of waste exports from the US to China increased from US$740 million in 2000 to US$11.5 billion in 2011.

More electronic waste

That meant that in 2011, waste imports accounted for 11.1 percent of the total amount of China’s import trade volume from the US, right behind crops, electronic products, chemicals and transportation equipment.

The United Nations forecasts that by 2020, the number of computers thrown away as garbage in China will double or even quadruple from 2007, while the number of waste cell phones may increase by seven-fold.

Perhaps more telling, over 70 percent of the 500 million tons of electronic waste produced annually worldwide may enter China through different channels.

Chinese Customs statistics show that more than 8 million tons of plastic waste was imported annually from 2011 to 2013. Director Wang thinks the real number is much higher after he observed the big plastic-recycling factories and workshops in Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian provinces and Tianjin, let alone those small ones scattered along the coastlines of China.

Some banned substances such as medical waste are often discovered among the imports.

As the head of a recycling department at the Berkeley Ecology Center in California says in Wang’s documentary, the household waste will all be classified for recycling by their department. “The plastic waste will definitely go to China, as the buyers in China often offer prices that double any others.”

Wang was surprised when he discovered the amount of waste being sent to China during his last visit to the US. It made him wonder if China enjoyed a more advanced recycling technology than others.

But years of investigating the recycling industry in China proved Wang’s guess totally wrong. Cheap labor and low environmental consciousness are the only “advantages” that local plastic-recycling workshops enjoy.

Classifying, washing, powdering and prilling for reuse are the main processing procedures for imported plastic waste, as Wang observed in the factories. Most of the work is done by low-paid villagers.

In a processing factory on the coastline, Wang saw waste from many countries including the US, Germany, Australia, and South Korea. All the workers were villagers from nearby, mostly women, with the oldest reaching 70.

The workshop is filled with nasty smells and flies. None of the workers can read the words stamped on the waste. They identify different plastics by listening to the sound when throwing it to the ground or observing the smoke or smell when lighting it on fire. A pair of gloves and a mask are all they have to protect themselves.

Undesirable byproducts

The oldest 70-year-old woman has been doing the job for more than 20 years, earning about 800 yuan (US$133.33) a month at present. Every joint on her hands is deformed and swollen in a strange S-shape.

Though the factories exist to recycle plastic waste, undesirable byproducts come with the plastic. They include rotten foods, stale milk, ripped clothes and even dangerous chemicals and medical waste.

Many workers told Wang that they hardly smell the odor anymore, as they are overwhelmed with it every day. Punctures from sharp plastic objects and being corroded by dangerous liquids are very common among the workers.

Wang encountered an old woman whose knuckle was burned black when she tried pouring some unknown strong acid out of a plastic bottle. Another man found his palms seriously peeling after shaking a plastic cloth for about 30 minutes.

Beyond the workers, there is constant danger for the children who are always playing in the area when their parents work in the factory. Needles are among their favorite toys.

Apart from hurting the workers, the waste plastic-recycling industry also poses serious threats to the villagers nearby by destroying the land, water and air.

As one example, the waste must be washed on an industrial scale. This poses great damage to regional water resources because abundant chemicals are used in the process, and water-treatment systems are generally very limited, if they exist at all.

Wang also told the Beijing News that “not all plastic can be recycled and reused.”

According to his research, only about 85 percent at most can be recycled. The rest will be dumped, often haphazardly. Some is just casually discarded at nearby farms, polluting the land and water further, while some will be burned.

“No creatures live in the dark rivers, and no locals dare to water their crops with it,” says Wang. “The villagers near the waste-processing factories in Hebei and Shandong provinces have been purchasing drinking water for decades rather than using the underground supply.”

Exhaust from plastic burning fills the regional air with toxic gases. Cancer is all too common in the villages around the big plastic-processing factories Wang visited. A local woman in Wang’s documentary said it was difficult to name all the cancer patients; she actually found it much easier to simply name a few people without cancer. A female factory owner told Wang that she dared not have a baby after entering the industry.

“Most of the workers are aware of the damage that the plastic waste may pose to their health, yet they still choose to go on for survival,” Wang told Xinhuanet.com.

The bosses can choose to live in towns while leaving the money-making factories in the villages. But there are no such choices for the poor workers who have to support their families on very limited salaries.

Some of the villagers even obstructed Wang in shooting his film, afraid that his work might rob them of the jobs.

“I am not against plastic recycling, but I do not support plastic recycling in this way,” says Wang.