City, Alipay join hands on waste classification, home appliance recycling

Shanghai launched a garbage classification and waste home appliance recycling platform recently in collaboration with Alipay, a Chinese mobile payment platform.

Within two months of its launch, more than 20,000 residents in the city have used the service. Alipay users only need to fill in their address and appoint a time for Alipay recycling staff to come to their door to weigh the home appliances, after which the money due is directly transferred to their Alipay accounts.

For low-value recycling products, Alipay will transfer "energy points" to the users' accounts, instead. The points can be used to exchange for other commodities or coupons at Alipay's recycling shopping mall.

Currently, the Alipay recycling range of waste home appliances includes 20,000 communities throughout the city, while other recycling categories including waste paper, plastic, metal, and clothes are collected only in more than 100 pilot spots introduced in Jing'an's Pengpu and Jiangning sub-districts. The recycling coverage will be expanded to the whole city in the future.

Guo Lei, director of the City Appearance and Landscaping Management Bureau of Pengpu Town in Jing'an, said the majority of residents who recycle are elderly people, who earlier had to go through a lot of trouble to find a recycling spot in their neighborhood. Now with the Alipay recycling platform, the process has been simplified, so more and more young people are expected to join the city's recycling endeavor.

Yang Wei, an official with the Alipay recycling platform, said Alipay hopes to use the platform to support the city's sanitation and recycling systems, while making the recycling process easier for all residents.

Also, the Alipay recycling service will be unveiled in other cities, and additional incentives will be provided to push more people to join in the recycling and environmental-protection endeavor.