China's first beverage bottle collecting machine has proven a hit on Shanghai's popular pedestrian shopping street Nanjing Road. According to the English language Shanghai Daily ( with photo), the machine accepts plastic and aluminum beverage containers with readable bar codes and releases a 0.10 yuan coin for each accepted bottle.

The machine, designed by a Beijing-based company, swallowed more than 1,700 bottles during the May 1-3 holiday. The street management office, according to Shanghai Daily, said the goal is to help reduce the number of waste collectors on the street and raise people's awareness of environmental protection.

Check out this photo: right by the brand new reclaim machine, a trash collector is reaching into a conventional trash bin for bottles.

Are these trash collectors feeling threatened? I bet so, especially as the government is hinting plans to place more automatic reclaim machines in Shanghai.

But until such machines stand on every street corner, waste collectors should still have some job security. At a street corner in Shanghai, I took this picture of two women warmly chatting on the sidewalk. The one in the vest is a government-employed street cleaning staffer, and the other, in a leather jacket, is a self-employed trash collector--collecting everything from aluminum to paper to plastic bottles. I don't know how they got to know each other. But it wouldn't be a surprise if the cleaning lady sells the bottles she collects to the recycler.

Waste collecting isn't an easy job. There seems to be a lot of competition on the street. Sometimes the collectors follow or beg people for bottles. But most of them are used to that and aren't shy. Their faces look indifferent. After all, it's a legitimate way to make a living. The collectors don't add glamor to the city, but they do no harm. They only help the society recycle.

I remember seeing aluminum pop can reclaim machines in New York City. It looked like some users were professional collectors that lived on the street. But Chinese collectors won't go to the automatic machine for bottle redemption, because they get a higher price from recycling dealers than from the machine --so far, I should add. If one day, the machines pay the same as the dealers, then dealers and other middlemen may lose their jobs too. In that case, China's recycling system may have a transformation ahead and will only become more efficient. But isn't employment and social stability a big concern of the government?