A seaside view of Dachen Island in Taizhou. [Photo/IC]

In Jiaojiang district of Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province, coastal residents wearing blue vests collect plastic bottles, discarded fishing nets, and other refuse daily.

They deliver them to a nearby recycling station called the "Little Blue Home", part of an innovative "Blue Circle" system launched in recent years to clean up the sea and boost incomes.

According to Zhang Wenxiang, a representative of the Little Blue Home in Wenling, a county-level city of Taizhou, the recycling price of the marine plastic bottles is around 1.5 yuan (21 cents) per 500 grams. Fishermen sell the collected waste to recycling firms, which process it for downstream manufacturers of phone cases, clothing, and even shoes.

The value chain — led by the local government, driven by enterprises, and joined by the public — turns marine waste into usable resources.

In 2023, the project won the highest environmental honor of the United Nations, the Champions of the Earth award. To top it off, Taizhou's model was codified in July under China's first local regulation on marine plastic waste governance.

Zhejiang is also tapping its vast tidal flats for "blue carbon" resources. A 2023 auction sold 2,340.1 metric tons of blue carbon, funding further research and cultivation and showing how ecological protection can generate both environmental and economic gains.