ABSTRACT

Suzhou, China is one of the two cities selected by the Ministry of Science and Technology for experimenting with the establishment of waste recycling systems in urban China, funded under the prestigious scheme National Key Project for the 11th Five-Year Plan. In 2008, the Suzhou municipal government formed a task-force to consider establishing a recyclable waste collection network in Suzhou. Based on the primary data collected from collected from interviews with the waste recycler in the City Garden Estate, we estimated monthly avoided emissions of CO2 and CH4. This chapter illustrates that urban households, property management companies, and waste recyclers can identify cooperative waste management solutions. The benefits from working together include difficult-to-measure employment opportunities and sustainable livelihoods for often stigmatized migrant workers. The chapter demonstrates that the interface between government policy and civil society needs to be reconfigured in China.