China will ban all foreign garbage from entering the country next year, but waste remains an open question.
“Foreign garbage” towards the final years, China is no longer as “recycling factory of the world”, next year a total ban on the garbage entry of the new revision of the “China environmental pollution by solid waste control program” also formally in September this year on the road, a Chinese ecological environment chief priests Qiu Qiwen said: “to make the solid waste law really become a” long teeth “law.”
China’s decisive battle against foreign garbage, a paper ban, seems to be easy to defeat, but, in fact, hard to fight behind, local garbage is big Brother grits teeth, the waste problem did not follow the ashes.
After the containment of foreign garbage
China is the world’s largest waste producer, and the problem of waste disposal has become a thorn in Zhongnanhai’s side.
In July 2017, China released the Implementation Plan of Banning Foreign Garbage from Entering China to Promote the Reform of Solid Waste Import Management System. Over the past three years, the import volume of solid waste has been greatly reduced, from 13.48 million tons in 2019 to 7.18 million tons this year, down 71 percent from 2016. “Although there has been a reduction in foreign waste, China itself has a very large amount of waste,” said Lai Weijie, director of the Green Citizens Action Coalition. “The recycling process has serious secondary pollution, health risks and poor working conditions, which have not been addressed simultaneously.”
Lai Weijie non-governmental organizations in China served as “urban solid waste” project consultant, according to his observation, in 2008 the global financial tsunami, China export is restricted, for stimulating economic growth, the government encourages urban and rural consumption, large excess waste, and as a “world factory”, China manufacturing overcapacity, combined with China’s economic development as the lack of waste reduction thinking, this waste a lot of growing and serious problem in more than a decade.
According to the 2019 Annual Report on Environmental Prevention and Control of Solid Waste in Large and Medium-sized Cities issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China, the total amount of general industrial solid waste, industrial hazardous waste, medical waste and household garbage in 200 large and medium-sized cities in China in 2018 exceeded 1.8 billion tons. Risk society and policy research center, national Taiwan university postdoctoral researcher says in “bian, these solid wastes need to be a different approach, in China is facing many contradictions and problems, and competition between cities and provinces, sweep the snow from his own doorstep, or across borders, across the city’s poor coordination treatment according to state such as common.
Pollution problems transferred within the territory
China has launched the fast key for garbage classification, but the back-end recycling mechanism lags far behind.
China’s ban on the cross-border flow of foreign waste has not stopped the transfer of waste within China’s borders. “That’s a big problem.” Mr Lai points to tricky structural concerns: “The transfer of waste in China, a vast continent with a huge gap between rich and poor, is the equivalent of rich countries shipping their recycling to poor ones.” Compared with the international Basel Convention, which restricts the cross-border movement of hazardous wastes, there are fewer effective controls on the internal movement.
Despite various social crises and international political challenges in China, Xi Jinping has repeatedly stepped down, which is related to the “maintenance of stability”. “Bian’s analysis, first of all, garbage disposal problem increasingly serious in China, many places garbage siege, also exposed the garbage treatment if don’t speak so well in propaganda, followed by improper disposal ways, such as wide built incinerators, due to the burning process will produce toxic dioxins, over the years the incinerator movement to become the biggest environmental protests in China. Lai weijie said waste disposal is a “NIMby facility”. In addition to rural protests, in the process of urban expansion, cheaper “property land” and “waste disposal land” in the suburbs begin to overlap, which also leads to middle-class protests.
This new version of the Solid waste Law “grow teeth” severely punished, the fine increased 10 times, the maximum fine of 5 million yuan. “Bian she thinks, in the central for waste disposal issued many commands, opinions, and through a variety of laws, for decades always does not have the desired effect, and the main reason lies in the central and local governments, and between the state and the private sector, there are deep collusion and contradictions of interests, in this case, some law just slogans, some only tube has so-called” teeth “, local governments may not able to carry out, there are a lot of tough nut to crack.
Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian and other provinces have all issued fines of more than 100,000 yuan since the new law hit the road. “At first, it may be a great deterrent, but it doesn’t act on its own.” Lai admits that he is not optimistic about the effect of heavy fines. “In Taiwan’s waste policy, the transition was successful, because there was a mature civil society involved, and in recent years, social participation and civil society in China began to shrink.”
By the end of this year, 46 key cities in China will have completed garbage classification and treatment systems. On the face of it, China’s garbage classification system has delivered a good report. However, in the eyes of experts, front-end management and back-end processing have been separated and have completely failed to catch up with the progress.
Lai Weijie, said the new solid waste law living garbage classification should be brought into the law, in fact, the Beijing municipal life waste management ordinance began as early as 2012, Shanghai, guangzhou, xiamen and Shenzhen were also developed the living garbage classification management approach, although have a good start and publicity, have also made some achievements, but later returned to normal, waste management need to front the institutional management, back-end processing equipment, charge system and the establishment of the circular economy system cannot lack or lag behind.
The new law supports the burning industry
Incinerators have been built across China, and waste policy has been hijacked by the incinerator industry.
“The new solid Waste Law protects the incinerator industry, and there is little regulation of it. It is a pity that China has to build an overall waste management system.” Lai Weijie sadly said, “China’s mixing garbage incinerator to burn together, it will produce more of the secondary pollution, the civil society in China for advice when burning pollution control is put forward, according to the classification and mixed burned at the same time, take a tiered pricing or different subsidies, none have been adopted, but there are a lot of law regulate landfills.”
Over the past decade, the number of incinerators in China has increased by 303%; According to the Panzhishi Environmental and Energy Research Center, incineration of household waste is likely to account for 57.5 percent of the total by 2020, more than 54 percent of the 13th Five-Year Plan.
“For local governments, this kind of re-incineration means they have a lot of money to build incinerators. Once incineration is done, the waste will soon be out of sight. In addition, there are government subsidies, which have led to the construction of incinerators in the past few years.” “As a result, garbage sorting in China has always been all about the sound of stairs, because when a city does a good job of sorting its waste, half the waste is gone, and so is the incinerator’s income, leading to the incinerator industry’s resistance to garbage sorting and weakening source reduction and resource utilization,” Bian noted.
“People are opposed to the incineration of waste, so local governments are pushing for waste separation to solve the problem of soaring household waste.” “However, through political and economic forces, the incinerator industry has made it clear to local governments that it is impossible to implement waste separation, and that even if it does, it will not be able to implement the resources, equipment, policies and regulations at the front and back ends required for waste separation,” bian said.
Is China ready to scrap?
In the process of waste management, benefit redistribution is involved, which also becomes the resistance to reform.
Lai weijie pointed out that this time the solid waste Law includes resource recycling and source reduction, but it also encourages incinerators to some extent, which is bound to result in competition and cooperation in the future. These two different thinking parallel and lack of a good coordination and management system, waste problems will certainly emerge in an endless stream.
Version of the solid waste law has added to the terms of the comprehensive utilization of solid waste tax reductions, Lai Weijie believe that recycling award aid mechanism design involves many detail specification, such as awards subsidies authentication, how to avoid fraud, Taiwan similar problems have happened in the past, recycling system must be of a complete set of legal system, at the same time there is transparent information disclosure and supervision mechanism, through rigorous layer upon layer specification, to the architecture can be a long long of the circular economy.
In addition, the new law also emphasizes the introduction of the extended producer responsibility system for the first time, requiring manufacturers of electrical and electronic products, lead batteries, automotive power batteries and other products to establish a recycling system matching the sales of waste products. In fact, as the industry knows well, “the regulatory process has been delayed and the scope of regulation has narrowed.”
Lai Weijie explained that in 2008, there had been “Circular Economy Promotion Law”, and article 15 stipulated that “catalogue and management measures for mandatory recycling products and packaging materials”, but had not been formulated for more than ten years. At the end of 2016, The State Council of China issued the Notice on the Implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility System, which included products such as electrical appliances and electronics, lead batteries and vehicle power batteries. The promotion timetable was set in 2017, which is now three years behind schedule. At that time, it also included composite beverage packaging and abandoned vehicles, but now it is not included again.
“It can be seen from these that China is facing great difficulties and bottlenecks in establishing a complete set of resource recovery management mechanism and producer responsibility extension system.” “In the process of law making and reform, the original stakeholders have to be challenged, the redistribution of interests involved, and the industry orientation has to be reoriented, which may be one of the reasons for the delay and narrowing of the implementation process,” Lai said.
This “solid waste law” really long teeth, or become the vested interests of the pawns? “Bian says, this can be launched from difference plan next year to examine the content of the policy, such as whether to cut subsidies, burning incinerator industries proportion is under repair, as well as recycling industry subsidies and preferential have obvious regulations, garbage sorting and recycling two network convergence, even has a large budget to promote land use planning, garbage sorting and storing if these contents are empty, then the implementation of the act of solid waste is also questionable.
Foreign garbage is just the beginning, waste to go back, Zhongnanhai to calculate how much environmental cost.
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