Until my last breath, my struggle in environmental protection will never stop! I am taking a path no one has ever taken before.

Tian Guirong set up a village-based environmental protection NGO. As a world-famous environmental protection volunteer, she has been awarded several times.

Tian Guirong (53) is an ordinary village woman from the northern part of China’s Henan Province. She set up Xinxiang City Environmental Protection Volunteers Association – the first NGO of this kind in her native Henan Province and in the country as a whole. She also established the first environmental website in China, the http://www.greentian.org/. As a world-famous environmental protection volunteer, she was awarded the Ford Conservation and Environmental Grants. In addition, she has been honored as China’s “Non-governmental Ambassador for Environmental Protection” by the United Nations Environment Program. In 1998 Tian began an unusual self-financed project to collect used batteries. Traveling to Beijing after she had problems with her battery business she read an article, “Big Pollution by Small Batteries”, and realized the serious negative impact of used batteries on nature. This led her to take up the project despite strong familial opposition. “Until my last breath, my struggle in environmental protection will never stop!” is her motto. Guirong had spent some 90,000 yuan to collect 65 tons of used batteries, thus saving seven million square meters of land from pollution.

Xinxiang City Environmental Protection Volunteers Association