China is going to “substantially” limit its output of carbon dioxide. President Hu Jintao announced this on Tuesday during the UN summit in New York where some one hundred world leaders were discussing how to tackle climate change. The Chinese head-of-state didn’t give any details, but a trade-in scheme for electronic equipment is one of the energy-saving measures.

Mrs Jin has firmly decided that a computer-operated fridge-freezer combination isn’t necessary. “The normal double-walled one is energy-efficient enough,” she said to a salesperson at Suning, a Chinese electronics giant. Her husband took a last longing glance at the computer-controlled white monster. “Will we still get a discount from the government?”

She doesn’t hear him any more, because she’s standing in the queue with a handful of forms for the state subsidy. The Wangs are profiting from a large-scale trade-in scheme for white goods and other household appliances. Whoever throws out an old television, air conditioner, computer, washing machine or fridge, receives a discount of 10 percent on a new purchase. The state refunds the discount to the participating shopkeepers. In that way, the Chinese are persuaded to buy new equipment that fulfils the environmental norms.

Doing the washing
According to Suning, most people are buying new electronics products from Chinese manufacturers. That’s a very recent development. Previously, China imported almost all the goods meeting rigid environmental norms from the west, but last year it began manufacturing goods for the domestic market with ‘green labels’ that tell the consumer how much electric power it actually takes to do the washing.

“Before, our own Chinese brands didn’t have the technology to manufacture energy-efficient equipment”, explains the sales manager of Suning. Now the industry is catching up, and we have our own Chinese mark of quality. The green age has arrived.”

Massage footbaths
Amid the abundance of mixers, massage footbaths, flat screens and other electrical goods that fill four floors of Suning, you can easily forget that economically China is still a developing country. Anyone who wanted to make an energy-efficient purchase before 2008 was directed to more expensive foreign brands. The majority of the Chinese public, for economic reasons, chose a cheaper Chinese brand.

“Before 2008 you had no idea how high the energy bill would be due to a new airco system”, said a man who had a rattly old power-hungry one at home. He’s going to change it immediately for an energy-efficient one.

And he’s not the only one; according to the newspaper Beijing Daily, since the start of the trade-in scheme in the capital 51,000 pieces of equipment have already gone to the scrapheap. The Chinese government has calculated that 470 Gigawatts of power per year can be saved if consumers unplug five million old devices. In terms of greenhouse gasses, that will save 0.47 million tons of CO2. That amounts to little compared to the staggering tens of millions of tons of CO2 that Chinese industry needs to stop spewing out. But in the ambitious Chinese plan for saving energy, every litre of CO2 actually counts. Whether it’s polluting motor cars, plastic bags or whole electricity plants; in August every producer of greenhouse gasses received a target to cut emissions from the National Commission for Development.

Second-hand market
”OK, away with it!” A special “recyle and delivery team” collects the old equipment. “We do that to make sure the old equipment doesn’t end up on the second-hand market. There are enough people who would buy such a power-hungry TV for a couple of tenners. Then they may still have years of enjoyment from it, but that isn’t the intention,” says Zhu Ghuozi.

To ensure that the old equipment also passes under the watchful eye of the environmental authorities, participants in the scheme only receive their state subsidy if they have definitely given their energy-guzzlers to the special team. Three old televisions go on a trolley towards Zhu’s van.

In exchange, his colleague delivers a brand new washing machine to the floor above. It doesn’t fit in the bathroom, and the fridge that follows won’t go through the kitchen door. “ I thought, I’ll profit from the ten percent saving, and do my bit for the fight against climate change,” says the sniggering owner. “I’ve been a bit too enthusiastic. They’ll all have to go in the living room.”