China’s plastic problem: lack of circular economy stifling ‘necessary’ reform of high-pollution industry
- As the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of plastic, China is in urgent need of more efficient methods of plastic recycling and reuse, new study finds
- China’s existing plastic-packaging policy still lacks compulsion and uniformity, and it is costing billions of US dollars a year
China lacks substantial impetus in its push to implement a circular economy for its plastics industry, leaving the root cause of plastic pollution largely unchecked, industrial experts and research have implied.
China’s plastic-packaging industry should move to an efficient and resource-saving circular economy from the current linear economic model, according to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Tsinghua University that was released last week.
This report, in line with the country’s goal of creating a waste-free society during its 14th five-year plan period from 2021-25, called for focusing on source reduction, the enhancement of the waste-plastic-packaging recycling system, and the development of a high-quality recycled-plastics market.
“We are at a special time when extreme weather events across the country are causing concern, but in the near future the fight against plastic pollution will receive the same attention as climate change in China,” said Li Jinhui, a professor with the School of Environment at Tsinghua University, and executive director of the Basel Convention Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific.
Confronting the current plastic pollution and economic losses caused by the plastic-packaging industry, the report said that transforming the plastics recycling economy is of urgent importance for China.
For more than a decade, China has been criticised as one of the largest contributors to plastic pollution. Overseas studies in recent years indicated that China produced one-fifth of the world’s single-use plastic, and that its subpar waste management had led to an increased risk of those plastics making it to the ocean.
In 2020, China’s production of plastics in their primary form surpassed 105 million tonnes, accounting for nearly one-third of global plastics production, and around half of the plastics were used in packaging production, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Wood Mackenzie, an energy and commodities consultancy.
The United Nations Environment Programme conservatively estimates that the environmental cost of inefficient plastic-packaging recycling is around US$40 billion globally, and approximately 95 per cent of the value of plastic packaging material is wasted due to single use, resulting in a direct economic loss of nearly US$80 billion to US$120 billion per year.