- Elderly Mr. Jiang Zhaohua, wearing sandals, searches the river for floating waste such as plastic bottles.
At 3 PM yesterday, at the Four-Weis Wharf on Hankou Riverside, 72-year-old Jiang Zhaohua used a net to scoop up a drink bottle floating on the river’s surface. Over the past three years, he has collected more than 20,000 plastic bottles along a 2-kilometer stretch of riverside, and in addition, other white floating debris in the river has also been scooped up.
Mr. and Mrs. Jiang are from Sichuan and live with their daughter on Erqi Road in Wuhan. Grandpa Jiang enjoys fishing and goes to the Yangtze River almost every day. “I noticed there were always plastic bottles floating along the river, and it just didn’t look right.” Three years ago, he and his wife began using fishing nets to walk along the river between the Second Yangtze River Bridge and the Erqi Yangtze River Bridge, collecting plastic bottles drifting in this section.
Every day, they collect more than 30 plastic bottles along the roughly 2-kilometer riverside, and sometimes up to 70. Grandpa Jiang said that the river also has a large amount of other white garbage, such as plastic bags and food containers. As long as he can reach them, he collects them all. The Jiangs are not well off financially, so they sell the collected plastic bottles and trash to recycling stations to earn a bit of extra income. He estimates that over the past three years, they have collected around 20,000 plastic bottles along the river.
The actions of the elderly couple have moved many people. Mr. Li, a local resident who often visits the riverbank, said that seeing them collect plastic bottles and bags has made some people feel ashamed to throw garbage into the Yangtze River.