The ban explained
China started to import solid waste in the 1980s, when its rapidly growing economy fueled gigantic demand for cheap raw materials.
"Solid waste is a resource and source of pollution at the same time. In the past, when China needed to develop the economy, it valued its economic value and ignored how it may also pollute the environment," Wang Wang, secretary general of the China Scrap Plastic Association, told the Global Times.
"A lot of people thought the majority of foreign waste was smuggled into China. But actually, most of it enters China legally and only a small amount is smuggled," Xu Haiyun, chief engineer of the China Urban Construction Design and Research Institute, told the Global Times.
But as China deepens its supply-side reforms, more attention is being paid to protecting the environment.
This is not the first time China has restricted waste imports. In 2013, China launched the "Green Fence" campaign, a 10-month long initiative to prevent the import of unsorted shipments of recyclable waste from abroad. During the campaign, China prevented about 58,800 tons of foreign waste from entering the country, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Domestic impact
While the latest move has dealt a blow to overseas waste exporters, it will also push China's domestic recycling industry to upgrade its technology and standards.
China launched a campaign to inspect all factories that hold import licenses for plastic waste recycling this July, when 420 officers from the Ministry of Environmental Protection conducted a special round of inspections in 22 regions involving 1,792 factories that deal with imported waste, checking their pollution controls and import permits. By July 29, the ministry had given suggestions or punishments to 1,074, or 60 percent, of these businesses.
The head of a chemical fiber factory in Jiaxing, East China's Zhejiang Province told the Beijing Youth Daily that previously around 50 percent of the raw materials the factory used were scrap plastic from countries including Indonesia, Bangladesh and Tanzania. The factory has now stopped importing scrap plastic and vows to use only primary domestic raw materials in the future. "It takes months to import these materials and sometimes when they enter China, the price of domestic materials has dropped. This won't be a problem in the future," the factory head told Beijing Youth Daily.
But as the ban looms, this question is being posed - how to fill China's demand gap, when as much as a quarter of the raw materials in some industries come from foreign recyclable waste.
Experts say one way to bridge this gap is for China to recycle more of its own waste, much of which now ends up in landfills. "It's especially important to raise China's safe recycling rate. China recycles a lot of things, but most of it is done by small family businesses which pay no attention to pollution," Wang said.
One reason that Chinese businesses favor imported waste is that it is of better quality. A businessman in Shanghai who declined to be named told the Global Times that some imported plastic waste is both cheaper and of better quality than domestic waste.
The majority of Chinese recyclers which provide raw materials to manufacturers are small family-run affairs which use low-tech equipment and often ignore environmental protection rules.
The other way is to use more primary raw materials to replace foreign recycled waste, which may push up prices.
"I used to visit a fabric factory in Guangdong Province which manufactured fabric using imported second-hand clothes. The factory won many awards for its recycling efforts and even receives government subsidies. But it doesn't dare tell the public what its fabrics are made of. Why doesn't it use cotton from Xinjiang as its raw material?" Xu said.
