Hu Songsu of Changtu town in Zhejiang leads charge to change old ways and foster environmentally friendly practices
Editor's note: China Daily is publishing a series illustrating the country's efforts to achieve its carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals.
A fisherman's wife from a small seafaring community in Changtu town of Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, has become the unlikely catalyst for an environmental campaign that has changed local habits and created a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future for the residents.
For years, ocean plastics had hindered the fishermen in Changtu, polluting the waters and spoiling catches.
In 2020, Hu Songsu, a 60-year-old local and wife of a fisherman, had finally had enough and struck out on her quest to change minds and attitudes and clean up the waters around the island of 13,000 people.
Five years on, as a fisherman docks his trawler and steps off holding a net full of plastic bottles, Hu deftly takes it off his hands and captures an image of the bottles via a dedicated app, which records the time and location details such as longitude and latitude.
Born and raised by the sea, Hu has been involved with fishing in some way her entire life.
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"My father and my husband are both fishermen," she said. "Our town has no other industry, and people here rely on fishing for a living.
"Decades ago, we could easily fish not far from shore, but those days are long gone," she said.
With increasing ocean pollution, water quality around the island declined, and fish numbers dwindled, impacting local fishermen's income.
"Around 2020, I had the idea to collect plastic waste from the sea," Hu said. "I called on other fishermen's wives to join me and urged the fishermen to collect plastics while out at sea."
These women, known as yusao (fishermen's wives) in Chinese, have traditionally handled fishing safety, and resolved disputes among fishermen. Today, they've taken up the mantle as volunteers dedicated to protecting the marine environment as well.
Hu said that some of the ocean plastic came from the fishermen themselves who live and work for extended periods at sea as they lack the space to store their garbage, and so she set about encouraging them to change their ways and find a better solution.
"We called on the fishermen to store garbage on the boat, collect floating plastics and bring them back to shore to reduce pollution," Hu said.
Once the plastic waste reaches land, it can be recycled, she said.
Thanks to the collective efforts of these women and fishermen, in the past five years, a total of over 110,000 plastic bottles have been collected from the local waters. Over 80,000 old boat batteries have also been collected.
The drive initiated by Hu has gone on to be included in China's Blue Circle environmental initiative, which won the 2023 Champions of the Earth award, the United Nations' most prestigious environmental recognition.
However, Hu's journey on Changtu Island was a challenge from the start. According to Hu, the most difficult part was changing the deeply ingrained habits of the fishermen.
"Awareness was not fostered overnight," she said. "Initially, it was hard to convince them to bring plastic waste back to land.
"Life at sea is already difficult, and asking fishermen to collect garbage in addition to their daily work was a tough sell," she said.
But Hu and her fellow yusao volunteers didn't give up. They patrolled the harbor daily, and whenever a boat pulled in, they would board it to educate the fishermen.
"We taught them how to bring plastic garbage back and explained how reducing plastic pollution would improve local fish and crab populations," said Hu.
Over time, their tireless efforts gradually began to pay off. They successfully signed agreements with fishing boat owners to ensure the proper classification of ocean waste. Today, fishermen are eager to collect plastic waste and transport it to shore. At its peak, 71 boats were taking part in plastic waste collection on the island, according to Hu.
A group chat with over 400 members, including both fishermen and volunteers, now coordinates the recycling of plastic waste. "It has become routine for those fishermen," Hu said, as her phone rang with notifications from fishermen bringing in their newly collected plastics.
Yu Le'an, a 35-year-old who has been fishing for more than a decade, has been in charge of collecting garbage on the boat for the past four.
"Ocean waste also increases our costs. Plastic and metal debris caught in the fishing nets damage them and take time to remove," Yu said. "We also want to reduce the waste.
"Plus, when we sell the collected plastics for recycling, we earn a little extra money for beverages and vegetables during our trips," he added.
Yu and his fellow fishermen have dedicated space on their boats for waste collection, as they often spend one to two months at sea. "We sometimes use fishing nets to transport the waste to the land," he said.
Fei Haiping, a 58-year-old fisherman with over 20 years of experience, has been an advocate of this cleaner approach when out at sea for years. "The sea looked bad with all the bottles floating around," he said.
Over the past decade, Fei has encouraged his fellow fishermen to keep garbage on board instead of tossing it into the water. "We are able to collect 100 to 200 plastic bottles during a single trip," he said.
Once back on shore, bags of collected plastics are brought to a building near the coast, where a group of women classify the plastic bottles based on colors and shapes.
Inside the building, colorful blocks of compressed plastic bottles pile up to the ceiling, with each block weighing around 35 kilograms. These sorted bottles will be shipped to recycling facilities, where they will be transformed into plastic pellets for a second life.
One of the women working there is Yang Shuwen, a 60-year-old local yusao. "These bottles are recycled into materials for clothing and stationery, which I think is very meaningful," she said. "My husband also knows where the plastics they collect end up."
Yang and the other women in their red volunteer vests work tirelessly in front of the building, sweating under the sun, sorting bottles suitable for recycling. According to Yang, they can sort 10 35-kg blocks of plastic bottles each day.
Working eight hours a day, four to five days a week, these women earn from 1,500 to 2,000 yuan ($206 to $275) per month for their efforts. The money comes from the sale of plastics to manufacturing companies, according to Hu.
"To be honest, the work is far from pleasant. We are here because we've volunteered to protect the marine environment," Hu said. "At the end of the day, we are dealing with garbage every day, and it gets smelly in the summer. Plus, we also need to follow strict classification requirements to ensure the waste is properly sorted for recycling."
In 2022, their volunteering work was officially included in the Little Blue House project, a joint effort to recycle ocean plastic in Zhejiang province, which involved collaboration among volunteers, fishermen, businesses and government agencies. This project has also been established in coastal Zhejiang cities such as Ningbo and Taizhou, where dozens of Little Blue Houses operate under the same recycling mechanism.
Hu's team now cooperates with Zhejiang VisionBlue Technology Co to recycle collected ocean plastics.
"Thanks to the establishment of the Little Blue House, collected plastics can be sold to enterprises at higher prices, and the process of recycling plastics has become more streamlined," Hu said.
Plastic bottles now fetch 10 yuan per kilogram from recycling companies, which sustains the operation of the Little Blue House and provides income for workers like Yang. The above-market price paid for the plastic is passed on further down the production chain.
"We also use the money to buy work clothes for fishermen who participate, as they don't gain much from collecting garbage," Hu said.
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Last summer, the county government stepped in with a new online system that rewards fishermen with points for collecting ocean waste, which they can use to purchase items from local supermarkets.
Adapting to this new digital system was a challenge for these volunteers. "We had to learn how to use the camera app and the points system, then teach fishermen how to use it," Hu said.
These efforts are crucial for tracking the origin of plastics, ensuring that they can be sold at a higher price as ocean plastics, a key link in the circular economy emphasizing environmental benefits. The photos, with location details, help trace the plastics from the sea to the shelves.
In addition to ocean plastics collected by fishermen on their trawlers, the Little Blue House also provides opportunities for people with disabilities or the unemployed to collect plastic waste washed up on the shore, contributing to the endeavor while making some money.
"There is less plastic garbage in the sea recently," Yu said. "The quality of crabs has also improved this year."
