According to the Voice of China "Central Radio News" reported that according to the National Development and Reform Commission revised the "Industrial structure adjustment guidance directory (2011)" the decision of the relevant provisions, disposable foam tableware will be removed from the "eliminated product catalogue". From today, the disposable foamed plastic tableware banned for 14 years officially ushered in the "lifting of the ban day".

Disposable foamed plastic tableware is made of polystyrene, resin as raw materials, after high temperature heating, melting and adding foaming agent (butane) and other extrusion pull sheet, and then secondary heating, blister molding, made into a variety of disposable tableware such as fast food boxes. If this tableware is not recycled, it will cause serious environmental pollution. At the same time, some enterprises in the production also added industrial talc powder, fluorescent whitening agent and other additives that do not meet the relevant national health standards, and buried hidden dangers for food safety. In addition, this material has poor heat resistance, deformation over 90 бу C, and the release of harmful substances. Therefore, it can not be used for heating, nor can it contain the food that has just come out of the pot. However, in various roadside fast food sales points, most of them use foam lunch boxes to serve hot dishes, and consumers are accustomed to it.

1998 foam tableware once floated to Gezhouba, causing generator set failure. In 1999, disposable foam tableware was included in the elimination of backward products, banned in China. This year, the National Development and Reform Commission to "foam tableware can be recycled after use, many countries and regions in the world have been used, can save oil resources" and other reasons, in the revision of the industrial structure adjustment guidance catalogue, deleted the "eliminated product catalogue" in the disposable foam plastic tableware, which means the legal return of foam tableware.

According to conservative estimates, there are at least 100-200 foam lunch box enterprises in China, with an annual output of about 14 billion. For many years, disposable foam tableware has been "banned", mainly because of the low production cost and entry barrier. A non-foam lunch box to 20-30 grams of raw materials, and foam tableware only 5, 6 grams, the cost is very low, and more than 10,000 yuan a production equipment, 8 hours can produce more than 5,000 foam tableware. Some small workshops use recycled waste plastic, and even medical waste made of lunch boxes, each cost only 6-7 cents, or even lower. So while there are policies up there, there are also countermeasures down there.

For many years, foam lunch boxes have occupied half of the total market share of disposable lunch boxes in many cities, or even more. Qian Guijing, vice president of the China Light Industry Federation and chairman of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association, once told the media that after the lifting of the ban on foam lunch boxes, access standards should be strict and network management should be carried out. At present, five related industry associations have drafted four sets of management systems for industry management, enterprise access, quality management, waste recycling and recycling, and submitted them to the relevant departments of The State Council.

In view of the current urgent need to establish a recycling system, experts believe that should be in accordance with the government support, enterprise operation, the principle of participation of the whole people, clear foam tableware recycling and supervision of the executive department, research and introduce incentives to support the recycling of disposable foam tableware. Experts believe that you can refer to the internationally accepted principle of "who pollutes, who is responsible", and the management department will charge the appropriate pollution treatment fees to the production enterprises according to the standard, as the funds to support recycling.

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