Program helps kids to turn trash into pencils, soccer balls

Two waste bottles for a pencil, 500 grams of unrecyclable waste for a notebook, and 15 kilograms of waste paper for a soccer ball or basketball - the equations are cemented in the mind of Nyima Dbangmo and all other students at the Second Middle School of Zadoi county, in Yushu Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Qinghai province.

After every weekend, Nyima Dbangmo holds a plastic bag of trash, such as used water bottles, as she returns to school from home.

The garbage collected by the 14-year-old basically paid for her stationery items last semester, from pencils to notebooks, she says.