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   纽约曼哈顿联合广场(Union Square)每周一和周六的衣物纺织品捐赠回收站(Textiles Recycling)经常看到年轻人拿着一大包干净的衣物赶来。这位值班的志愿者告诉我这次他们将把一些衣物捐到智利，帮助那里的穷人。
    纽约这类的回收再利用服务很多，加上很多旧货店，所谓浪费的美国人也有不浪费的一面。相比之下，所谓勤俭节约的中国人现在回收意识差了很多。很多年轻从来也没有穿过旧衣物，更不要说去二手店买旧衣服穿。

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By Chen Weihua

Americans are often regarded the most wasteful people, in ways of consuming everything from water, paper to food and energy. It is said that if the whole world lives like Americans, it would require resources of four planet Earths.

This is largely true.

However, the recycling stations and thrift shops I come across often in New York defy such an image. They make me feel Americans, or New Yorkers, are less wasteful than Chinese who believe frugality is an inherent virtue of the nation.

For example, in Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket every Saturday and Monday, you can see a textiles recycling station tent where people bring bags of clean used clothing, hats, paired shoes, linens, handbags and belts. The participants, either volunteers at the station or donors, are often young people, different from the Chinese view that old people are more enthusiastic in recycling.

Such textiles stations are available in eight Greenmarkets in New York City. Along with hundreds of thrift shops, second hand stores, consignment shops and flea markets, they form a huge army where used goods find new owners. And many of the shrift shops are run by charity organizations to benefit the poor and needy, or use the proceeds to help people with AIDS.

Back in Shanghai, thrift shops or second hand shops which were well known in the old days have long gone. The once wildly popular second hand store in Shanghai known as Huaiguojiu, or Huaihai Road State-owned Second Hand Store, is only a distant memory, so are the hundreds of recycling stations once scattered in every part of the city.

Now the people who provide recycling services are migrant workers riding tricycles, unable to meet the needs for quality and effective recycling.

Unlike New York, where you can find stylish young people sell or buy second clothing in a shop in Brooklyn’s cool Williamsburg neighborhood, most Shanghainese never want to buy or wear used clothing, even vintage ones, regarding them as dirty and a loss of face.

While New Yorkers discard some 200,000 tons of textiles a year, Shanghainese are also reportedly to produce 130,000 such used clothing annually, much of it ending up in landfills.

The good news is that the city has started to place clothing recycling bins in some old residential compounds. But new and upper-scale residential quarters, where the young and wealthy live and where more recyclable clothing is produced, are often not equipped with such facilities.

Considering the enormous pressure on the environment and resources from a fast-growing China, it makes a lot of sense for more recycling in China.

Meanwhile, China’s huge rural and migrant population, who are often at the bottom of the income distribution, means second hand items would have a huge market. It should inspire as many bright Chinese MBA students to start businesses in the field, just as some of the most successful online thrift stores were launched by American MBA students.

All these probably explain why the Ministry of Commerce issued guidance last December to promote the development of second-hand businesses in China during the 12^th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15). That is totally in line with the national strategy of shifting to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly development mode.

After all, China, the world’s second largest economy, is still a developing country, ranking 96^th compared with 8^thfor the US, according to the World Bank. There is simply no reason for Chinese to go wasteful, not now and not later.