Summary: Most recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China jointly issued the Key Tasks of Plastic Pollution Management for 2022, followed by a series of launches of provincial- and municipal-level plans.

To step up the control on plastic pollution across the county, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China jointly promulgated the Key Tasks of Plastic Pollution Management for 2022 (hereafter referred to as the Key Task) recently, after the issues of the Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution and the Action Plans for Plastic Pollution Control during the 14th Five-year Development Plan Period (2021–2025).

The Key Tasks summarise China's achievements in 2021, pointing out that preliminary results have been seen in the control of plastic pollution throughout industrial chains including efforts in reducing pollution volume at its source, enhancing industrial capacity of plastic substitutes, slashing the usage of disposable tableware in food delivery industry, increasing the utilisation rates of reusable plastic bags between package deliver stations up above 90% as well as the recycling level of plastic wastes including the agricultural film recovery which hit 80% nationwide last year.

It also urges departments to act on the requirements for biodegradable material sector accenting product certification, core technology, standard development, package for agricultural use and supervision in 2022. Details are listed below:

Reduction of plastic products at its source

• Deepen inspection on industrial links from production to sale:
• ban production and sale of extra-thin plastic bag (thickness<0.025 mm), polyethylene (PE) film for agricultural use (thickness<0.01 mm) and single-use (disposable) foaming plastic tableware;
• develop a certification and labeling system for green products and promote the use of reusable raw materials and the product recycling;
• support projects that aim at breakthroughs in key degradable plastic core technologies and commercialisation of technological achievements, and formulate certification and labeling standards of degradable materials, to improve product quality and performance.
• Reinforce governance of parcel package:
• include green packaging materials in the scope of green product certification to build a greener parcel delivery business;
• pilot large-scale application of recyclable parcel packages across industries.

 

Governance of agricultural film and pesticide package

• Use and recycle agricultural film scientifically with focuses on the promotion of fully biodegradable agricultural film and thickened high-strength agricultural film in key areas that usually consume large amount of agricultural film;
• Draw up a systematic recycling network that powers effective prevention and control of "white pollution" and ensure the recovery rate of agricultural film staying above 80%.

 

Inspection on key areas

• Step up law enforcement on monitoring and sampling of plastic bags and film products for agricultural use; if any non-conformity is found, follow-up sampling would be carried out onto those produce the unqualified products;
• Shore up testing capacity and measures of degradable plastics especially checks on misconducts like pseudo-labeling.

 

In the past two months, such regions, provinces and cities as Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shandong, Shanxi, Beijing and Tianjin have published their local versions of key tasks of plastic pollution management for 2022, based on the central Key Tasks of Plastic Pollution Management for 2022, pressing forward measures to control local plastic pollution and defined accountabilities of departments of all levels.