Word: plasticizers
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...Pulled aboard the coast-guard vessel one by one, each man looks around, eyes wide with fear, shivering from the cold. One of the Greek sailors, who wears plastic gloves and a headlamp, speaks to the men in broken English. "Where you from?" he asks. Eventually, one softly responds. "Afghanistan," he says, and the others repeat the word. None have identity documents. It's past 1 a.m., and the coast-guard captain estimates the raft left the Turkish coast four hours earlier. The men have rowed more than halfway across the strait, a few hundred yards into Greek territorial waters...
...beginning--that is, November 2005--there was a video game called Guitar Hero, in which players jammed on a fake plastic guitar along with real rock songs. And it was good. But not good enough. A year ago, the rival Rock Band added drums, bass and vocals. Now there are two improved versions that feature the full instrumental lineup: Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour...
...Beijing, the dividends from recycling are instant: hard cash for discarded cardboard, paper and plastic bottles, paid by the junk men who trawl the streets on tricycles each morning, yelling "Collecting scrap! Collecting scrap!" So fierce is the demand that a bag of trash rarely makes it to the curb before someone is poking through it in search of recyclables...
...sorting and preparing it for a second life. The yards of Dongxiaokou are filled with stacks of old radiators, piles of cardboard, old tires and inner tubes, mounds of glass smashed into tiny shards, nests of tangled rebar and cooking-oil jugs looped together with string. A mountain of plastic bottles more than two stories tall looms over the squat brick buildings where recyclers live and work. "Somewhere in there is a bottle you used," says a woman as she sits at the edge of the pile, rapidly grabbing bottle after bottle, stripping their labels and tossing the shorn containers...
...Just as China's economic boom fueled a roaring demand for the raw materials of much of Asia and Africa, so has it spurred an insatiable appetite for recyclable scrap paper, plastic and metals. In recent years, amazing stories have emerged around the world about stolen manhole covers, junk haulers making healthy salaries, and coins being melted down because their value as scrap, with China the big buyer, exceeded their face value. China's scrap trade has lifted the fortunes of both the very wealthy - such as Nine Dragons Paper CEO Zhang Yin, whose recycled-paper manufacturing company made...