World in View: Recycling Labor in China

China's carbon footprint is huge, but so is its paper recycling effort, according to a recent report from Washington-based Forest Trend. One force helping drive the massive recycling machine is shown in this photo by TerraMarin reader Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: rural Chinese migrants who come to the cities to make a meager income by salvaging recyclable waste. "It's a vast informal industry in China's cities," says Eckholm, formerly the newspaper's Beijing bureau chief, now based in New York, of these freelance collectors, seen here sorting their finds in a vacant lot outside the capital city.