The Global Impact of China's Ban on Imported Waste: China's massive waste management industry forms the basis of waste recycling systems in most countries worldwide. Therefore, the announcement of China's strict ban on imported waste sent shockwaves through the global recycling industry. China will ban the import of various solid wastes by the end of this year (2017). In a document submitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese government stated that it had discovered \"large amounts of highly polluting waste and hazardous waste\" mixed in with imported waste, and therefore will ban the import of specific types of waste by the end of this year, including certain types of waste plastics, unsorted waste paper, waste textile materials, and vanadium slag. Mainland China and Hong Kong import large quantities of waste from around the world. According to data from the United Nations Comtrade database, in 2015, more than 70% of the world's waste plastics and 37% of waste paper were exported to China. European countries and the United States are the main sources of these wastes. China's quality requirements for imported waste were previously not stringent. According to statistics from the trade group Plastics Europe, China's plastic production accounted for 15% of the world's total in 2009, increasing to 28% in 2016. However, due to the lack of a mature plastic recycling industry in China, it has had to rely on importing recyclable waste from other countries. This economic model has also been favored by waste-exporting countries, as they conveniently use containers previously used for importing finished products to transport the waste for recycling back to the production site\u2014China. But with the development of China's domestic waste recycling industry, coupled with pressure to control industrial pollution, China has become more stringent in accepting waste from other countries. The \"Green Fence\" operation launched in 2013 aimed to prevent polluting \"foreign garbage\" from entering China by strengthening inspections of waste transport vessels. Earlier this year, China launched another crackdown on \"foreign garbage.\" Through \"Operation Sword at the Gate 2017,\" all waste containers entering China must undergo manual or X-ray inspections. Only imported waste from recycling companies that meets quality standards can clear customs. However, commentators in the recycling industry are uncertain whether China's latest government statement is merely an extension of Operation Sword 2017 or a prelude to a complete ban on waste imports. In contrast, the US industry organization, the Society of Waste Recycling Industries (ISRI), described the impact of the Chinese ban as \"devastating\" and \"catastrophic.\" In 2016, the US exported $5.6 billion worth of waste to China, a trade ISRI stated was \"critical to the health and success of the US recycling industry,\" and a Chinese ban on waste imports would lead to tens of thousands of job losses and the closure of many recycling companies across the US. Kostas Willis, a lecturer in resource efficiency at the University of Leeds, said that a complete ban on waste plastic imports by China would have a huge global impact. \u201cThe current problem is that the recycling market is policy-driven; that is, we recycle raw materials because of mandatory recycling targets. We need to build a proactive market that creates demand for recycled materials, and this cannot be achieved overnight. We must price different wastes to reflect their value and make secondary materials more attractive. I can't think of any other way to create demand.\u201d He pointed out that two plastic bottle processing plants in the UK went bankrupt a few years ago because the price of oil used to manufacture plastics was too low, which greatly reduced the cost of producing plastics, making it difficult for recycled plastics to compete with virgin plastics. For Plastic Europe's plastics statistics, please refer to the attachment: plastics_the_facts_2016_final_version.pdf. Source: Chinadialogue (2017-07-31) (Compiled by PIDC) Attachment file: plastics_the_facts_2016_final_version.pdf<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u4e2d\u570b\u62d2\u6536\u6d0b\u5783\u573e\u7684\u5168\u7403\u5f71\u97ff \u4e2d\u570b\u9f90\u5927\u7684\u5ee2\u68c4\u7269\u8655\u7406\u7522\u696d\u662f\u5168\u7403\u5927\u90e8\u5206\u570b\u5bb6\u5ee2\u68c4\u7269\u56de\u6536\u9ad4\u7cfb\u7684\u57fa\u790e\u3002\u56e0\u6b64\uff0c\u4e2d\u570b\u5ba3\u5e03\u56b4\u7981\u9032\u53e3 […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-related-reports"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n