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Fran Lu

A move by some primary schools in China which requires pupils to hand in empty milk cartons has created a thriving second-hand market in the containers.
People are selling their own empty Tetra Pak milk boxes for around 0.3 yuan (4 US cents) each on China’s second-hand e-commerce platform Xianyu, run by Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post.
The behaviour initially sparked curiosity until some parents revealed that the market was created by their children’s primary schools, which require pupils to submit empty milk boxes as homework.
They said the homework was aimed at cultivating an awareness about environmental protection among students.
A primary school in eastern China’s Zhejiang province even set up a competition, giving those who submit the most milk boxes a free tour of a recycling factory.

On the mainland social media platform Xiaohongshu, some people also said they had to “crazily drink milk” to finish their children’s unusual homework.
A 24-year-old woman from eastern China’s Zhejiang province recalled that when she was young her school had a milk carton return scheme by which the empty containers would be sold by the school and the money made was used to help poor children.
A mother, surnamed He, told Beijing Youth Daily she needed to submit 60 milk boxes for her two children every month. The second-hand market was a “relief” for her before she started the business herself.
She said she collected empty milk boxes from cleaners in her residential area and could sell up to 20,000 a month during the summer holidays. Her customers are based in big cities across China.
Some criticised the schools for taking an across-the-board approach to their schemes which did not take into account the circumstances of individual pupils.
However, others raised a different scenario.
Some schools that distribute free packs of milk to students daily require the cartons to be handed in on the same day as a way of helping make sure the beverage is actually consumed by the pupil.
In poor areas where milk is distributed to the students of families who cannot afford it, pupils are asked to give back the empty boxes to make sure their parents do not give their milk to their male siblings, a person said on social media platform Douban.
On Xianyu, another recycled product has also been popular among students – empty pen cartridges.
They cost 0.2 to 0.3 yuan (4 US cents) each. Buyers are mostly secondary school students, who are asked by their schools to hand in empty pen cartridges to prove how hard-working they are.
A man, surnamed Du, said he was asked to submit one empty pen cartridge every three days when he was in secondary school in central China’s Shanxi province.
He recalled the teacher lecturing them: “How is a hard-working student not able to finish even one pen in three days?”
Du tried doodling to waste ink, and buying beverages to replace the plastic refill part of the pen with the straw. He then discovered the second-hand market and was finally freed from such tasks.

A secondary school student in an under-developed region in southern China’s Guangdong province said she was also asked to hand in empty pen cartridges.
“When the quality of education is lacking, policies are one of the few ways that schools like mine can ensure student motivation,” she said.
Competition for higher education is increasingly fierce in China.
A record number of 13.42 million students took the gaokao national college exams this year.
According to the 2023 educational development report published by the Ministry of Education, only 4.8 million candidates went to universities, while another 5.5 million attended colleges.


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Motivational school carton-return policy seized upon by people who can sell thousands of empty containers a month


A request by primary schools in China that pupils hand back their empty milk cartons has led to the creation of a thriving second-hand market in the containers.


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