“No one wants to do this anymore,” said the neighborhood recycler gloomily, as he finished breaking apart a piece of metal with his little tool. This 34-year-old man from Henan, surnamed Zhu, is the designated recycler of a residential district (小区) near Chaoyangmenwai. “The business has gone downhill greatly since the middle of this year,” he added.

The decline in the recycling industry is related to Beijing’s crackdown on pollution earlier this year. When the government decided to shut down factories to alleviate air pollution, the closure of small and medium sized factories gave larger nationalized factories a monopoly over the industry. These state-owned factories have since lowered the offer price for recycled materials, and the anti-pollution measure’s chain reaction has impacted recyclers like Zhu, all over the city.

A husband and a father, Zhu has been in the same spot everyday, running the same route for four years. In order to save rent, he shares a 7-square-meter room with his father out on the fourth ring road, and spends 40 minutes commuting to work on his battery-installed cart.

His schedule everyday is as follows: get up between 5 and 6 am; arrive at his spot in Chaoyangmenwai before 7 am; receive, categorize, and load the garbage until 6 pm; drive to the recycling center 10 km away; spend over an hour selling to the center’s different stations; and eventually drive back to his den out the Fourth Ring.

Standing by his cart and the garbage piled up all over the little corner, Zhu pointed to the different types of recyclable garbage: “I recycle old furniture, electronics… although no one really gives me those anymore… newspapers, empty bottles, cans, and everything. But mainly just paper and plastics.” “The industry is in a bad shape,” he emphasized again, “one kilogram of scrap metal sells for 0.2 yuan, the price is similar for copper, papers, and plastics. Everyday I drag 100 to 200 kilograms of stuff to the recycling station (打包站,dǎbāo zhàn), earning only over 100 yuan. If you subtract rent and food, I am left with only 30 or 40 kuai.”

As a designated recycler in the neighborhood, Zhu does get much respect and understanding. His only advantage, aside from his youth and strength, comes from his father’s work as the staircase sweeper for the whole residential compound. Although he has a designated corner a little off the main road, dama in the neighborhood often lodge complaints that his area is too messy or taking up too much space. He also needs to watch out for snatchers who take his empty boxes, barrels, and papers when he goes to collect garbage from residents. “People like us who are out and about far from home, life is not easy. Each day is about getting by. Not like at our hometown, where one could do whatever one wants (像我们出门在外，不容易。凑合一天是一天。不像在老家，想做什么做什么).”

The dama’s complaints about the messiness may be fair, but there is only so much Zhu can do to keep the place tidy. There are rules to sorting: all bottles need to be put in bags, all paper boxes need to be flattened, metal need to be broken down to its smallest entity, and everything has to be piled onto the cart in a systematic way so that over 100 kg of materials can fit.

In just half an hour, several people brought garbage to his stand. One brought a giant washing machine box, full with foam, cans, small boxes, and leftover food. He categorized the items in the box, folded the boxes flat, and criticized: “Residents never separate recyclable and non-recyclable waste. After we receive the garbage, we need to sort through everything and then throw their non-recyclable garbage into the trash can for them.” Bottle pickers sometimes bring him bottles, which he buys at 0.07 yuan/bottle. However, this kind of source is unstable. Given the roaming nature of bottle pickers, they sell their bags of plastic bottles to the closest recycle stands (such as Zhu’s) wherever they go. The more rewarding items such as appliances only come every once in a while.

I asked him, what his ambition was when he was younger. He was a little shy to answer, but revealed he had wanted to be a carpenter. However, since the market is dominated by companies and its production by large factories and machinery, doing carpentry is almost impossible nowadays.

His first job in Beijing was related to carpentry; he was a refurbish man. He would work 12 to 13 hours everyday for only 100 yuan. Since his aging father was the neighborhood sweeper and had troubles managing, he transitioned and became a recycler. Since then, he visits his wife and kid in his hometown once a year around the Spring Festival and works everyday the rest of the year, without weekends or holidays.

“Changing work isn’t easy, you need to have guanxi,” Zhu said, pointing to the guys who park cars across the street: “Even to park cars on the street, you have to have guanxi to get that job.” “Since our business is dwindling, a lot of recyclers become rickshaw drivers during the summer.”

But Zhu stays at his stand out of filial piety. In a few years, he may leave Beijing, go wherever and do whichever job pays him the most. Even the recycling business, he laments, is being taken over by large service companies and online recyclers. One can look up the buying price online, schedule a time, and a recycler will arrive and pick up. These people can offer a better rate, yet they always lower the final price by finding faults, which Zhu proudly claims he never does. He would gladly give up this job over to technology, as long as his father stopped working here.