From January 1, 2018, China’s import ban on foreign garbage has officially come into effect. The ban covers 24 types of solid waste in four categories, including waste plastics from domestic waste, unsorted waste paper and waste textile raw materials. As for the reason for the ban on imports, the document clearly states that "the illegal entry of foreign garbage has been repeatedly banned, seriously endangering the health of the people and the safety of our ecological environment." This is just the beginning. By the end of 2019, China will gradually stop importing all solid waste that can be replaced by domestic resources. Obviously, the Chinese government’s basic attitude towards foreign garbage has changed. Recycled metals, plastics and other raw materials are cheaper than virgin materials. Fundamentally, China’s status as a global manufacturing center and the resulting massive demand for cheap raw materials have determined that China has continued to import large amounts of solid waste from abroad over the past few decades. According to data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (Comtrade), more than 70% of waste plastic and 37% of waste paper in the world were exported to China in 2015. European countries and the United States are the main sources of this waste. This supply chain can be sustained naturally because every link in it is profitable. For developed countries, the cost of domestic processing is about US$400 to US$1,000 per ton, and the cost of shipping to China is only US$10 to US$40 per ton even with freight. However, for Chinese receivers, the cost is extremely low. Price buying, through multiple selections and classifications, and reselling layer by layer, forming a self-contained industrial chain at the bottom of the global value chain. Therefore, "Chinese recycling" not only provides a cheap solution to the garbage problem in Western countries, but also becomes an important factor for China's low-end manufacturing industry to maintain its cost advantage. The long-term import of large amounts of foreign garbage has divided China's waste recycling industry into "two skins" - foreign garbage enters formal and high-quality disposal institutions, forming a large industrial chain; he recently investigated two recycled plastic companies in Shandong and Fujian , these two recycling companies have first-class processing capabilities and management levels. Walking into the workshop is like entering a sample standard library. But on the other hand, the domestically produced soil waste with relatively low quality and poor recycling and classification is recycled in some small factories and even workshops that are not standardized. In other words, China's formal recycling and processing industry has become accustomed to processing formal "foreign garbage" that meets import standards. Therefore, it is feasible to allow them to "eat" lower-quality soil garbage that has not been strictly classified and recycled in a short period of time. ? After sealing off the import of foreign garbage, the recycling and processing industry can only turn back and think about how to establish and develop its own recycling system in China; and high-quality processing capacity and full power to dispose of domestic resources will inevitably significantly reduce the garbage entering small workshops. Proportion and quantity. In the long term, the ultimate goal of the ban is undoubtedly to increase the recycling rate of domestic solid waste in China, and even force the introduction of front-end waste classification to promote the development of a circular economy. The manufacturing industry currently has three options - foreign renewable resources, domestic renewable resources in China and new materials. As China's energy and resource tax rates rise, the cost of new raw materials is rising; and after foreign waste is banned, the raw material supply gap in the recycling industry can only be filled by domestic waste, which will force domestic waste to be prepared. It will further force the front-end residents and communities to do a better job of garbage classification. Greenpeace East Asia also believes that stopping the import of "foreign garbage" will promote the development of the domestic solid waste processing and reuse industry and garbage classification and recycling. Taking the waste plastic industry as an example, China's annual import volume of waste plastics has soared from 300,000 tons in 1992 to 7.34 million tons in 2016. After imports are stopped, Chinese waste plastic companies will face a raw material gap of millions of tons per year and need to pass Domestic waste classification and solid waste recycling systems are being filled. But Du Huanzheng, a professor at the School of Environment and Sustainable Development at Tongji University, expressed doubts. He said that the insufficient amount of domestic resource waste is the fundamental reason why China imports waste from abroad. In other words, the real situation is that even if China promotes the classification of domestic waste in an all-round way, the amount of resource waste is still difficult to meet market demand. Regarding the environmental issues that are the root cause of the contradiction, Du Huanzheng believes that this is fundamentally a question of how to improve the solid waste disposal industry. As long as large-scale treatment companies can ensure sewage treatment, air quality management, and occupational hygiene, there should not be a complete ban on imported waste. The industry also believes that a perfect market should allow imports, but must meet China's regulatory requirements and standards, and this environmental standard can be set very high, because as China's economic development level increases, the cost of environmental damage should also increase. . Source: ChinaDialogue (2018-03-13) (PIDC compilation)
