New plastic limit order: more and more plastic pollution "dead knot"
China News Weekly Reporter / Su Jiede
Issued in the 943th issue of China News Weekly, 2020.4.13
In 2019, an average of 7.80 million express deliveries were sent nationwide every hour. According to the "2019 China Express Development Index Report" released by the State Post Bureau on March 27, the national express delivery business has accumulated 63.52 billion pieces, and the average daily express delivery volume exceeds 170 million pieces.
These couriers use a lot of plastic packaging products such as tapes and bags. According to a report released last year by three environmental organizations, Green and Equality, the express industry consumed more than 39.8 billion meters of tape in 2018. These plastic tapes can be wrapped around the earth nearly 1,000 times, and in 2015 this figure was still 425 times.
With the increasingly rich consumption scenarios of residents, the battlefield of plastic waste has gradually shifted to the Internet, and the e-commerce, express delivery and takeaway industries have become the main battlefield. In order to solve these problems, on January 19, 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution". Launched the "Plastic Limitation Order".
According to CCTV Finance and Economics reports, in the eight years since the implementation of the old plastic restriction order, plastic shopping bags used in major commodity retail outlets nationwide have saved about 70 billion, with an average of 8.75 billion annual savings. However, in 2015 alone, the national express delivery industry consumed about 14.7 billion plastic bags, and the three largest domestic delivery platforms consumed at least 7.3 billion plastic packaging a year, an increase far exceeding the reduction.
The more the plastic is over the limit, the more difficult it becomes.
Repeated defeats
Since the reform and opening up, there have been roughly three stages before and after the plastic restraint order, and the policy implementation process has always been accompanied by controversy.
In 1986, plastic fast food boxes were used for the first time on railroads, and were favored for their convenience and low prices. However, a large number of white lunch boxes were discarded along the railway, which caused serious "white pollution". In 2001, the original State Economic and Trade Commission issued an emergency notice requesting that production of disposable foam plastic tableware be stopped immediately. This is the earliest version of the plastic restriction order.
However, the policy on how to treat disposable foam plastic tableware has been swayed. In 2013, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Guidance Catalogue for Industrial Structure Adjustment", which was deleted from the elimination catalogue, and the disposable foam tableware was legalized again. However, this year's new plastic restrictions have once again been added to the blacklist.
The alternation of prohibition and loosening policies will easily lead to a rebound in plastic restriction effect. Deng Yixiang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, previously wrote: "Because the problems of plastic waste management are very complicated, the relevant regulations on plastic management need to be repeatedly demonstrated, and it needs to be very cautious when it comes to avoid inconsistencies."
The massive movement of restricting plastics for the whole nation appeared after 2007. In December 2007, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Notice on Restricting the Use of Plastic Shopping Bags for Production and Sales.” In May of the following year, the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce promulgated the “Management Measures for the Use of Plastic Shopping Bags in Retail Retail Places.” These two The special documents are called "plastic restrictions". In the plastic restriction order, there are two most important policies: one is to prohibit the production, sale and use of plastic shopping bags with a thickness of less than 0.025 mm nationwide, that is, the ultra-thin plastic shopping bags that are called daily; the second is to implement plastic shopping Paid use system for bags.
However, the effectiveness of the plastic restraint order has been the focus of controversy for more than ten years. "The old version of the new plastic order is a bit of a feeling of pressing the gourd," Xie Xinyuan, director of the policy of the Zero Waste Alliance, told China News Weekly that the plastic limit order is limited to plastic bags that can lift the load, while the supermarket ’s plastic trays and plastics The membrane and flat pocket can still be used casually. Especially in many supermarkets, continuous rolls of flat-mouth plastic bags filled with bulky commodities are flooded and used indiscriminately, and even many people take them home in rolls. Some scholars said that this triggered a "certain moral crisis, and some consumers took the opportunity to tear off a large number of free plastic packaging bags when shopping, in order to replace paid plastic shopping bags."
The Zero Waste Alliance was jointly initiated by a number of public welfare organizations and public representatives across the country and is committed to promoting the solution of waste disposal issues. The team found in its work that after the implementation of the policy, large supermarkets and chain stores have performed well, but the bazaar market is still the hardest hit by the use of disposable plastic bags. Over the past 12 years, local law enforcement agencies have carried out governance actions against the bazaar market every once in a while, but unqualified plastic bags on the market have always been "in the spring."
"In 2016, our investigation found that few bazaars used standard plastic bags. At that time, it was also proposed which environmental protection organization could convert a bazaar from non-compliance to compliance, and will be awarded 10,000 yuan." Plastic Limitation Joint Investigation Team Promoter Yao Jia told "China News Weekly", but no one dared to take on this task, they thought it was impossible to complete.
After four years of hard work, Yao Jia and volunteers surveyed more than 700 markets in the country and promoted the use of plastic bags in more than 100 markets. At the same time, the reduction in plastic bags was considerable. It is estimated that 60 million plastic bags can be saved. However, the coverage of the Yao Jia team's survey is only a drop in the sea compared to the number of markets in China. Taking Shanghai as an example, there are 989 vegetable markets and thousands of mini-vegetable markets in the city.
"There are so many shops, farmer's markets, restaurants, mobile vendors, etc. in China. It is basically impossible for the environmental supervision department to effectively supervise the use of plastic bags. What's more, some operators repeatedly play cats in order to attract customers. The trick of catching mice is to use chargeable plastic bags for inspections, but secretly provide unqualified plastic bags for free. "Yang Limin, a lecturer at the School of Trade Negotiations at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, wrote that there are problems with law enforcement and supervision in markets and other places.
"The responsibilities of government departments are unclear. For example, environmental protection departments, market supervision and management departments, agricultural and rural departments, and housing construction departments have not clearly defined their responsibilities in the management of plastic waste, which makes it difficult to implement regulatory responsibilities." Deng Yixiang believes that the relevant regulations in the past It is too abstract and mostly a principled provision. There are few punishment measures for violations of the provisions and it is not easy to implement in practice.
The policy goal of prohibiting ultra-thin plastic shopping bags has not been fully realized, and the use of paid plastic bags has also appeared to be out of shape. In many media reports, in the early days, the use of plastic bags in supermarkets and shopping malls did drop sharply, but after a while, when consumers gradually become numb to the "charge lever" of two or three cents, the use of plastic bags The volume began to rebound a lot. "Plastic restriction order" has become a realistic "sale plastic order", and the mall has obtained considerable income through sales, becoming the biggest beneficiary. The cost of governance is passed on to the environment, but it has not promoted the establishment of green production, sales, and recycling systems for plastic bags.
Policy failure has long attracted the attention of policy makers. At the beginning of 2018, on the tenth anniversary of the implementation of the Plastic Restriction Order, the National Development and Reform Commission carried out the activity of "I Advise on the Prevention and Control of Plastic Waste Pollution" on its portal to collect opinions and suggestions on the prohibition and control of plastic waste.
It took two years from the solicitation of opinions to the introduction of the new plastic restriction order. "Policy-makers have learned plastics knowledge for at least two years," an unnamed plastics industry association told China News Weekly. The New Deal was expected to be introduced in 2018 and 2019, but it has been delayed many times. "Many people They are all urging the introduction of policies, but for the sake of caution, it is difficult to introduce them quickly like the old plastic restrictions. "
The New Deal basically covers the categories that have received much attention in the past few years: non-degradable plastic bags, agricultural mulch, disposable foamed plastic tableware, disposable plastic cotton swabs, and daily chemical products containing plastic beads. In specific application scenarios, the fields such as supermarkets, bazaars, express delivery, and takeaways are the focus of plastic pollution control.
Jiang Jianguo, a professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Tsinghua University, told China News Weekly that unlike the past, the New Deal clearly set a time point for completing tasks. For different products and regions, the government has formulated three time nodes of 2020, 2022 and 2025 respectively.
The New Deal specifications have also been significantly improved this time. In September last year, the Tenth Meeting of the Central Committee for Comprehensive Deepening Reform reviewed and approved ten opinions including "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Treatment of Plastic Pollution". The person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission once said: "The Central Committee for Comprehensive Deepening Reform has listed the development of a comprehensive treatment plan for 'white pollution' as a key reform task."
New scenes become new battlefields
The new policy of restricting plastics has paid special attention to the express delivery and takeaway industries.
The “Research Report on the Production Characteristics and Management Status of China ’s Express Packaging Waste” jointly released by three environmental protection organizations, including Greenpeace, Shaking Off Plastics, and the China Environmental Protection Federation, shows that the Chinese e-commerce “Double Eleven” shopping festival started in 2009 and has gone through seven years. During the year, the transaction volume exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time in 2015 and 400 billion yuan in 2019. In express packaging materials, plastic packaging materials use 851,800 tons, accounting for nearly 10% of the total weight of express packaging materials, but the recovery of plastic supplies is far more difficult than paper.
In response to the problems of express plastic packaging, the New Deal proposes to gradually expand the pilot from some provinces and cities to the whole country: "By the end of 2022, postal express outlets in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and other provinces and cities shall first prohibit the use of non-degradable Plastic packaging bags, disposable plastic woven bags, etc., reduce the use of non-degradable plastic tape. By the end of 2025, nationwide postal express outlets prohibit the use of non-degradable plastic packaging bags, plastic tape, disposable plastic woven bags, etc. "
Compared with express delivery, it is more difficult to supervise the delivery area. According to data released by Trustdata, a mobile internet big data monitoring platform, the transaction volume of the Chinese takeout industry is expected to reach 603.5 billion yuan in 2019, an increase of 30% year-on-year, and it will continue to maintain a rapid growth trend, while bringing in massive plastic waste.
The Greenpeace survey found that an average of 3.27 disposable plastic lunch boxes (cups) will be consumed for each order. Take Meituan as an example, Meituan takeaway is the largest takeaway platform in China. On July 27 last year, Wang Xing, founder of Meituan.com, posted on Weibo that Meituan's takeaway orders exceeded 30 million in a single day. Based on this calculation, Meituan alone can consume more than 90 million disposable plastic packages per day.
Regarding the problems in the food delivery industry, the New Deal proposes that the nationwide catering industry will ban the use of non-degradable disposable plastic straws by the end of 2020; from prefecture-level cities to districts and counties, the catering service will gradually ban the use of non-degradable disposable plastic tableware. By 2025, the consumption intensity of non-degradable disposable plastic tableware will drop by 30% in the field of food and beverage delivery in cities above the prefecture level.
In September 2017, the environmental organization Chongqing Green Federation prosecuted three platforms: Hungry Mee, Meituan and Baidu. The reason was that the garbage generated by the takeout caused severe environmental damage, and the three platforms were held responsible for this. Since then, Meituan and Hungry have added the "no tableware" remark option on the order confirmation page, and formulated a mid- to long-term environmental protection plan, but the effect is not significant.
The person in charge told the China News Weekly: "Although we can advocate merchants to reduce the use of disposable plastic lunch boxes, advocate that users choose not to use tableware, and encourage users to carry out correct garbage classification after meals, they cannot always use mandatory means. Restrict merchants and users. "
"At present, the country has not yet issued special laws and regulations. The e-commerce platform cannot force merchants to use what kind of packaging products, nor has the right to force the use of environmentally friendly plastic products by agreement." Guo Hu, deputy director of the legal affairs department of Hangzhou e-commerce Beijing Tell China News Weekly.
This also means that e-commerce platforms and take-out platforms lack both the means to restrict the presence of merchants and the motivation to restrict themselves. Jiang Jianguo, a professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Tsinghua University, told China News Weekly that the difficulty of new industries such as express delivery and food delivery lies in the dilemma between policy makers: whether to encourage companies to propose solutions or the government to take coercive measures? If compulsory measures are taken, they will worry about affecting industrial development.
The opacity of data is also one of the problems of governance. Regarding the plastic consumption problem caused by take-out, Meituan and Hungry and other platforms have separately formulated environmental protection plans. However, none of the platforms have announced the quantity and reduction of plastic packaging in detail.
Tang Damin, Director of Greenpeace Plastics Project, told China News Weekly: "The amount of catering packaging is a trade secret, and merchants are reluctant to provide it to the platform. However, without specific consumption data, it is difficult for the government to make scientific decisions. The industry first needs to establish a data Statistical system. "
Degradable "Have a good call"
Since this year, Liu Wei, vice chairman of Hainan Saigao High-tech Materials Co., Ltd., frequently went to the airport to greet customers.
Companies can now be said to be hot, meeting, receiving customers, and government leaders have become the norm.
The reason why the company is so popular is that Seiko Advanced Materials is currently the only company in Hainan that can produce biodegradable materials. Last year, Hainan issued the "Hainan Provincial Comprehensive Prohibition on the Production, Sale and Use of Disposable Non-Degradable Plastic Products" program, from "plastic restriction" to "plastic restriction", in the form of a negative list to reject "white pollution". From April this year, key industries and places in Hainan will gradually say goodbye to disposable non-degradable plastic products such as plastic bags and take-out boxes.
The ban on plastics is one of the 12 pioneer projects in the construction of Hainan Free Trade Zone. In the supply of products after plastic ban, fully biodegradable plastic products, paper products, cloth products and other products can be used as a substitute for disposable non-degradable plastic products. The replacement of biodegradable plastic products is the most feasible and the most concerned.
The first batch of domestic companies that entered the degradable plastic products industry appeared in 1999, and Liu Wei entered the business in 2006, which is regarded as the second batch of domestic practitioners. However, biodegradable plastic products were well-received or not, and many companies entered, but few survived. Liu Wei and the company also experienced a long period of pain. In his view, the biggest dilemma of this industry is the small market capacity. "By 2008, the company's technology has matured, and the main challenge is the low market acceptance. The people think that this product is expensive."
"Supermarkets can make money by selling ordinary plastic bags, but they can't make money by selling degradable plastic bags. If you want to increase the cost of consumer purchases, supermarkets will also worry about the problem of reduced customer traffic. The farmers' market is even more impossible to use. Bags are only two or three cents, accounting for two or three percent of the cost of sales. Vendors cannot afford it, and customers are unwilling to pay. "Liu Wei said helplessly.
But in fact, although renewable plastic bags are more expensive than ordinary plastic bags, they are not as profitable as expected. Liu Wei told China News Weekly: "The renewable plastics industry is not profitable. If it is calculated according to the profit rate, it may not be as good as ordinary plastic bags. This is determined by the characteristics of the processing enterprise, and the enterprise only charges a little processing fee."
In fact, Hainan is not the first province to fully promote degradable plastic bags. Starting from January 1, 2015, Jilin Province requires that the production, sale, and supply of non-degradable plastic shopping bags and plastic tableware be prohibited throughout the province, and special standards are set for degradable plastics. Enterprises and individuals who violate the regulations will be fined up to 30,000 yuan and up to 200 yuan, respectively.
Jilin ’s earliest ban on eating crabs attracted national attention at the time, but from the point of view of implementation results, it did not reach its goal. In May last year, the Zero Waste Alliance conducted a survey in Changchun City, Jilin Province and found that the local plastic ban and degradable promotion were not satisfactory. Xie Xinyuan introduced that a total of 9 biodegradable companies have been introduced in an industrial park in Changchun City. As of the end of May last year, 3 have closed down and 3 have been in a long-term shutdown state. Sustained loss.
The above-mentioned enterprise staff told the Zero Waste Alliance that this situation is mainly due to the fact that the actual promotion of degradable bags on the market in Jilin Province is not strong enough, the demand is low, the enterprises cannot obtain enough orders to guarantee operation, and some favorable policies given by the government in the early stage of investment promotion , Such as financial subsidies and free workshops, have gradually been eliminated or reduced, resulting in companies unable to achieve breakeven. At the same time, a small number of enterprises are also suspected of fraudulently obtaining government subsidies. They entered the park in the early stage of investment promotion by the Changchun Municipal Government and did not actually operate after obtaining subsidies.
Changchun City implemented a five-year plastic ban, which consumed a lot of administrative costs. According to a report from the Central Radio and Television International Online, from the implementation of the plastic ban to September 2018, the Changchun City Administration for Industry and Commerce dispatched a total of 37,380 law enforcement personnel and 12,460 law enforcement vehicles, and issued 1,350 orders for corrections. 326 times.
However, the effect was unsatisfactory, and the ban on plastic was basically defeated. In the largest wholesale market of Guangfu Road in Changchun City, the Zero Waste Alliance surveyed 18 plastic bags wholesale stores, 8 of which sold traditional plastic bags, 5 of which had traditional plastic bags and fake degradable bags, and only 5 sold degradable bags. On the consumer side, the Zero Waste Alliance survey found that only 40.95% of stores provide degradable plastic bags, 53% of the public clearly stated that they did not know how to distinguish, and less than 1.4% of the public said that they would degrade the degradable bags. Corrosive garbage treatment.
The embarrassment of a comprehensive local ban on plastics is that the huge market demand cannot be met or replaced. Xie Xinyuan believes that the Jilin case has a threefold dilemma: using ordinary plastic bags is difficult to ban, and fake and degradable plastic bags are mixed with fish eyes. The bigger problem is that it is difficult for degradable plastic bags to be truly degraded. "Half of the residents use degradable bags. Half of them are not used, which is very bad. In the process of composting degradable plastic bags, if they are mixed into non-degradable plastic bags, the degradation effect will not be achieved. "
"There is no ordinary plastic bag in the garbage dump, and the composting effect of the degradable plastic bag is guaranteed. Otherwise, the use of the degradable plastic bag is completely meaningless when the two plastic bags are mixed together." Liu Wei admitted.
The degradable plastics industry has been developing in China for more than 20 years, but it has been unable to be promoted on a large scale. Wang Jun, professor of the Department of Packaging Engineering at Jiangnan University and deputy director of the National Light Industry Packaging Products Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, told China News Weekly that the global production capacity is only one million tons. Degradable plastic products have insufficient capacity, high cost, and poor processability. , "The New Deal tried to apply renewable plastics in a certain scenario, but how effective it is is still difficult to draw conclusions."
Is degradable material the ultimate solution to white pollution? Wang Jun told China News Weekly: "Degradable does not mean true degradation. After recycling, the degradable plastic bags need to be composted for disposal, not to say that they can be degraded when thrown on the ground. If the degradable materials cannot be large-scale, centralized and large-scale Chemical application, it will also become a disposable plastic bag. "
Source and terminal are shortcomings
"The biggest problem with plastic bags is that they are thrown away after they are used up, not recycled as resource products, and have a very short life cycle." Jiang Nanqing, secretary general of the Plastic Recycling Branch of the China Synthetic Resin Supply and Marketing Association, told China News Weekly.
"It's not that there are any problems with these plastic products, but that the usage is unreasonable." Wang Jun said that the current plastic products are basically one-time use, without considering the recyclability, the recycling channel is not perfect, and the recycling efficiency and value are relatively low. . After the plastic products are used up, they will be disposed of or buried, causing harm to the environment.
To this end, this year ’s New Deal on Plastics has proposed the establishment and improvement of management systems for the production, circulation, use, recycling and disposal of plastic products to effectively and effectively control plastic pollution.
"Compared with the previous, the progress of the new plastic restriction order is to focus on the construction of the overall plastic recycling industry chain. It proposes the construction of a plastic recycling management system and steps to exert force from different levels, such as standardizing the production of enterprises and improving garbage. Recycling system, etc. There is also a relatively comprehensive framework and system planning for supporting supervision, policy and technological R & D. "Jiang Nanqing wrote in an article before.
Jiang Nanqing left the United Nations Environment Programme in September 2018 to enter the plastic recycling industry. She told "China News Weekly" that the New Plastics Policy is a guiding opinion, and local governments need to issue corresponding policies based on actual conditions. She suggested that the producer responsibility system should be implemented, "production enterprises should be responsible for the disposal and scrap of plastics, and not only recycling companies should pay for it." She gave an example. The EU has established an independent recycling system for renewable resources. The operating costs of the system are The producers and municipalities bear together. The producers include not only brands such as Coca-Cola and Nestle, but also chemical companies upstream of the plastics industry.
In May 2019, the "EU version of the plastic ban" came into effect, stipulating that the use of disposable plastic products with alternatives, such as plastic straws, disposable tableware, cotton swabs, etc. will be banned by 2021, and member countries need to be before 2029 Achieve the goal of recycling 90% of beverage bottles. And the European Union also banned the production and use of oxidized degradable plastics. The European Plastics Act also requires companies to assume producer extended responsibility (EPR) and economic responsibility for waste management and pollution control of disposable plastic products.
The fragility of the recycling system has always been one of the crux of China's plastic waste. "Resource recycling has issued a clear plan to indicate how to solve the problem of plastic recycling, but there has been no good landing plan." Jiang Nanqing said.
After the ban on the import of waste plastics in 2017, the domestic plastic recycling system has undergone a round of reshuffling and faced the difficulty of rebuilding the recycling system. Jiang Nanqing introduced that the crude oil price, the most upstream raw material of the plastics industry, is very low. Recently, the price per barrel is more than 20 US dollars. With the continuous expansion of Sinopec's production capacity, native plastics are becoming cheaper. In contrast, due to the high cost of recycling old plastic and the fact that recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic, few people choose to recycle plastic bags and other products, making it difficult to establish a recycling system.
"The New Deal is of great significance, but we still need to observe how effective it is at the practical level." Tang Damin told China News Weekly that environmental protection organizations, experts and scholars in the industry are more concerned about and looking forward to supporting policies.
In the eyes of many people in the industry, after the 12-year twists and turns of the old plastic limit order, the implementation of the new plastic limit order and the reduction of the use of plastic bags can no longer repeat the simple reliance on consumers "consciously" or "paid use" in supermarkets. Governance thinking. Lack of relevant system support, relying solely on the use of "economic leverage" for regulation and control, without opening up all links in the plastic restriction chain, and never solve the more knots that exceed the limit.
Jiang Jianguo believes that the control of plastic waste also needs to be controlled from the source. First, sort out which enterprises are producing ultra-thin plastic bags, whether they are regular enterprises or small workshops. To cut off circulation channels. "
Replacement is not a once-and-for-all solution. Some people even worry that there will be a situation where one type of plastic pollution will replace another type of plastic pollution. As a manufacturer of degradable plastic products, Liu Wei believes that no matter what alternatives, they are not truly environmentally friendly, and all have carbon emissions. "Reduction is the real environmental protection. We strongly believe in this concept."
"China News Weekly" No.13, 2020
Statement: The publication of the "China News Weekly" manuscript is subject to written authorization