In recent years, the Tibetan herdsmen on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau income level has obviously increased, the state's various subsidy policies such as the retreat grazing policy, the establishment of ecological public welfare posts, etc., to increase the income of herdsmen have a clear role. At the same time, the market prices of many scarce products produced by the Qinghai-Tibet plateau have increased rapidly, and the development of tourism has provided more income opportunities for herders. After the increase of income, the living standard of herdsmen is improving, the way of life is changing, and the change of lifestyle also brings a series of problems, among which the most serious is the rubbish problem. The problem of rubbish first manifests itself as some plastic that is difficult to degrade. After the increase in cash income, herders consume a lot of drinks, when I went to visit Tibetan herdsmen, they lined up more than 10 kinds of drinks to entertain me. I asked them why they wanted to buy so many drinks, they said the drinks sweet very well and they liked them very much. A large amount of beverage consumption has brought a large number of beverage bottle cans, which are rarely recycled on the plateau and become an important source of rubbish. Secondly, industrial products replace the original natural objects, such as the original clothing is yak skin, wool processing, even from outside to buy some, but also mostly cotton or silk fabrics, these natural products are easy to degrade. Nowadays, the clothing uses the chemical fiber raw material, the worn out later is very difficult to degrade, even the local people do not know how to deal with through clothing. A local intellectual once said they experimented with ways to throw worn clothes into the river and bury them in the soil, but they all caused pollution and could not solve the problem. Plateau area is often fragile, ecological environment is easily destroyed and difficult to recover, at the same time where oxygen is thin, cold and cold, all kinds of biological degradation process is very long.
Modern industrial products are cheap and not biodegradable, and the impact is not in the local environment. In order to protect the ecological environment, the villagers of Nangqian County Jianza village in Qinghai province set up the first 0 plastic villages on the plateau, also known as ' 0 abandoned villages '. In the view of local villagers, plastic waste is the most serious problem, no matter how to deal with plastic waste, including landfill or incineration, will cause serious environmental problems, the best way is to shut out plastic rubbish. The way they take it is very simple, first of all, to refuse plastic shopping bags and plastic packaging. The villagers go to the city to buy a variety of food, most of which are plastic packaging, they will take down the plastic packaging, the food into their shopping bags, this and the city to promote consumers to go to the supermarket to take shopping bags logic is exactly the same, but they do more thorough. Second, they reject soft drinks, which, in their view, not only cause a lot of cans of garbage, but also damage their health. Third, use local materials as much as possible in daily life to reduce reliance on plastics, such as replacing plastic barrels with casks. The village also has a rule that any visiting guests will take away the rubbish they bring. The village is located in the hinterland of the Three rivers, the unique natural environment and social environment created this 0 abandoned communities. But people are more interested to know, what kind of revelation does this story provide? Is this 0 abandoned community sustainable? One revelation: The role of demand in environmental protection. Seeing this story, one might think that the community did not reduce the rubbish, but simply excluded the rubbish from the community, in other words, by increasing the rubbish in other areas to reduce the waste in the community. On the surface, this is not unreasonable, because when they buy food, they take the plastic packaging down, put the food into their own cowhide or cloth bags, plastic packaging does not reduce, but did not enter the community. They asked the visiting guests to take the rubbish away, and the rubbish just changed places, and not diminished. But deep thinking will find that consumer demand for environmental protection has an important reaction. If more and more communities refuse to have these plastic packaging, excessive packaging, then will manufacturers change the product packaging? Product packaging has generated more and more rubbish, if all consumers start to reject these excessive plastic packaging, will the garbage be reduced? Environmental protection needs smart consumers. The second revelation: environmental protection is a full range of things. Residents of the village not only refuse plastic waste, they also set up a number of groups to protect the environment, for example, some groups watch the changes in birds, some groups monitor water, and some groups regularly check the growth of plants.
The refusal of plastic waste to be included in a wider range of environmental protection activities has continued to drive 0 of abandoned operations. Can imagine, if on the one hand when the supermarket to pick up recyclable shopping bags, on the one hand and rely on express delivery to solve meals a day, then the local environmental protection behavior is difficult to continue. The third revelation: social pressure in small communities can constrain people's behavior. There are more than 50 families in this village, the ideas of each family may be different and others will be unwilling to accept the norms set by the community, but in a small community it is easier to reach consensus, to encourage and monitor each other, and to make collective action easier to protect the environment of the community.