Chinese factory destroys wedding photos for fuel

Bee In a dusty warehouse in northern China, Liu Wei feeds photos of radiant wedding couples into an industrial shredder, turning stories of heartbreak into a source of electricity. Wedding photos are big business in China, where parks, temples and historic sites are often teeming with newlyweds posing for elaborate photos that capture their supposedly unbreakable bond.

But in a country where millions of divorces take place every year, many wedding photos end up in the attic or in the trash.

Liu’s company offers an alternative: bereaved ex-lovers can have their memories destroyed and recycled into fuel. “From our daily business exchanges, we found that the destruction of personal belongings is a blank space nationwide,” the 42-year-old told AFP at his factory, 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Beijing. “People with less experience in the market probably wouldn’t have noticed this opportunity,” he added.

Despite cultural taboos surrounding the destruction of statues of living people, Liu’s facility receives an average of five to 10 orders per day from all over China.

These include large wall photographs and smaller decorative photos and albums, usually cast from plastic, acrylic and glass. Workers lift the images onto a forklift and spread them across the warehouse floor for sorting. They then black out each face with dark spray paint to protect the customer’s privacy and smash non-shredding glassware with a sledgehammer. “These people are all trying to find closure,” Liu said. “They mainly want to untangle the knots in their hearts.”

Complex motivations

Tarnished and broken, the photos provide a glimpse of broken families in happier times. In one, a woman in a white wedding dress reclines on a bed of flowers, while in the other a couple in love stares into each other’s eyes.

A sporty couple in matching uniforms poses with a football, while nearby a man in love tenderly presses his face against his pregnant wife’s belly.

Liu waves his phone, films the defaced photos and sends clips to customers for final confirmation. He estimates that he has served about 1,100 customers since launching the service a year ago – most under the age of 45, and about two-thirds women.

They typically talk little about their divorce, and several have declined interview requests from AFP. Liu says the motivations for destroying wedding photos are often complex.

“Few of them do this out of malice,” he told AFP. “It may be that this item brings up certain thoughts or feelings… or is an obstacle that is difficult to overcome.” Some clients attend the destruction in person to add a sense of ceremony to a closing chapter in their lives, Liu said. Others keep their photos for years and only throw them away when they remarry or finally come to terms with the death of an ex-spouse.

Given the irreversible nature of the process, Liu says he gives customers one last chance to save their belongings in case they regret their decision.

After he gets the green light, he films how his staff gently pushes the photos into the grinding teeth of the shredder. The debris is taken to a nearby biofuel factory, where it is processed together with other household waste to generate electricity.

‘Respect the choices of others’

Divorce rates have soared in socially conservative China after marriage laws were relaxed in 2003. They have fallen dramatically since the government passed a law in 2021 requiring a one-month ‘cooling off’ period before couples tie the knot.

China registered 2.9 million divorces in 2022, compared to more than 4.3 million two years earlier. The number of marriages rose last year for the first time in almost a decade, giving Beijing some relief in its efforts to reverse a sharp decline in births.

After destroying the visual evidence of hundreds of unions, Liu says he has become numb to the emotions they evoke. “The deepest feeling I have in my heart toward my clients … is that you have to respect the choices of others,” he said. “You should never convince people one way or another,” he added. “It doesn’t do any good.” —AFP