Although China's large supermarkets have charged for plastic shopping bags, ultra-thin plastic bags in vegetable markets and small supermarkets are still free to use. Especially after the rise of the Internet, take-out and online shopping have become major users of plastic, which has led to China's annual plastic bag consumption exceeding 4 million tons, and consumption has increased instead of decreased.

According to foreign media reports, Indian Prime Minister Modi recently stated at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification that India will "say goodbye" to disposable plastics within a few years and will be committed to developing environmentally friendly alternatives and efficient plastic collection and treatment methods. This can't help but remind people of China's 11-year-long "plastic ban" and the fact that some industries have been unable to change their own "plastic" practices.

Currently, including China, nearly 90 countries and regions in the world have taken different measures to limit plastic, and 15 countries and regions, including China, have issued clear plastic bans. Although China's large supermarkets have charged for plastic shopping bags, ultra-thin plastic bags in vegetable markets and small supermarkets are still free to use. Especially after the rise of the Internet, take-out and online shopping have become major users of plastics, which are not within the scope of the "plastic ban". This has led to China's annual use of plastic bags exceeding 4 million tons, and consumption has increased instead of decreased. Why is the plastic ban action blocked? How to solve the harm of discarded plastics to the environment?

The implementation of the "plastic ban" that has been in place for a long time is not optimistic

2018 is the tenth year since the plastic ban was "implemented". In order to understand the implementation of the ban in various places, the civil society organization "Zero Waste Alliance" and other environmental protection organization volunteers conducted a survey of 1,101 offline retail outlets in nine regions including Beijing, Shenzhen, Shenyang, Hefei, Luoyang, Ningbo, Leping, Jiangxi, Rong County, Sichuan, and Sanhe Town, Fuyang, Anhui, and released the "Tenth Anniversary of the Plastic Ban--Survey Report on the Implementation of Merchants" on May 31, 2018. The report pointed out that the implementation of the "plastic ban" in offline retail places is not optimistic - among the 979 stores that provide plastic bags, 89 stores meet the requirements of "plastic bag label compliance", "thickness compliance" and "charges", accounting for only 9.1%; 36 stores comply with all the provisions of the "plastic ban", accounting for only 3.7%.

Although large supermarkets and Chinese chain convenience stores have the strictest implementation of the various indicators of the "plastic ban", the survey found that these two types of stores are also the most common places to provide flat bags, plastic wrap and other plastic film packaging that are not subject to the "plastic ban". The proportion of providing other plastic films is 45% and 35%, which is significantly higher than the Chinese average of 16%.

Xie Xinyuan, a policy researcher at the Zero Waste Alliance, said: "This means that large supermarkets and convenience stores have largely replaced the portable plastic shopping bags subject to the "plastic ban" with other plastic film packaging, which does not conform to the original intention of the "plastic ban", that is, to reduce white pollution."

Ji Junhui, a researcher at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the National Engineering Center for Engineering Plastics, pointed out that in 2018, China may consume 2.31 million tons of takeaway packaging. Most of the ordinary plastic lunch boxes, tableware and their packaging bags are non-degradable ordinary plastics.

Among the 30 takeaway samples surveyed by volunteers, 23 of them provided portable plastic shopping bags on the outer packaging, accounting for 77%. Among them, 83% had no logos at all, and 96% were non-compliant. In addition to plastic bags, takeaway products also include disposable plastic items such as spoons and forks, and the most used are disposable plastic lunch boxes. It is very common for online shopping platforms to use plastic sticky bags and woven bags. "This reflects that the "plastic restriction order" should make corresponding changes with the development of society and expand the scope and types of plastic restrictions." Xie Xinyuan said.

High-quality and low-cost plastics are difficult to ban and recycle

Can we use less or even no plastic products in our lives? Most people think this is difficult to do because plastic products are really convenient to use--"Fresh food, soup and other goods on the market can only be packed in plastic bags", "Plastic packaging is stronger and more waterproof than paper packaging, cheaper and more resistant to falling and wear than glass or metal packaging", "Plastic products can be used once, eliminating the trouble of carrying cloth bags or repeatedly washing and caring for them"... Even if shopping malls have long stopped providing free plastic packaging, most consumers still believe that its use demand is far greater than the cost of use, and it is difficult to abandon their enthusiasm for plastic products.

Rust-proof, corrosion-resistant, not easy to break, light weight, low cost, long service life, insulation, transparency and waterproof... With these advantages, plastics are widely used in industry, medical treatment, construction and daily life. According to statistics, in 2018, the world produced a total of 350 million tons of plastic; it is estimated that by 2020, the production and use of plastics in the world will reach 700 million tons.

"The emergence of plastic products has undoubtedly brought many conveniences to people's daily lives, but it has also brought serious environmental problems." Ji Junhui said that judging from the current trend of plastic waste, only 35% of plastics are recycled. Of the plastic waste that is not recycled, about 12% is incinerated or cracked, 46% is accumulated in nature, piled up on land or landfilled, and 7% enters the ocean. "The degradation cycle of ordinary plastics is generally as long as hundreds of years, and recycling technology is the most effective measure to solve plastic pollution. But now the utilization rate of plastic waste does not exceed 35%, and there is more than 15% of the total amount of plastic products. Plastic waste does not have the value and feasibility of recycling."

According to the properties of reuse, the raw materials for recycled plastics are required to be waste with relatively simple ingredients, such as factory scraps, easy-to-sort waste, etc., and they are clean and hygienic with good performance. Ji Junhui said that at present, a large amount of plastic waste can only be landfilled or incinerated as solid waste due to its mixed variety and dirtiness. In addition, there are products such as aluminum-plastic composite films, paper-plastic composite materials, and bag paint film products that cannot be separated or are difficult to separate. Cigarette butts, lunch boxes, etc. are contaminated during use. There are also plastic bags, daily plastic packaging, etc. that are large in size and light in weight, and cannot be transported or collected economically, and can only become long-term "white pollution". Ji Junhui said that landfill is currently the main method for dealing with waste plastic waste that cannot be reused. However, according to the amount of waste plastic waste in China, landfill requires 40,000 square meters of land every day. After landfill, plastic is difficult to degrade into permanent waste, and leachate may also be produced to pollute groundwater, atmosphere and soil. "Incineration can recover heat energy, but it will produce complex waste gases including hydrogen chloride, dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc., causing secondary pollution of the atmosphere. Therefore, professional incineration equipment and technology are needed, with large investment, easy loss of equipment and high operating costs."

Multi-pronged approach to promote plastic restriction should address both the symptoms and the root causes

Dr. Mao Da, policy advisor of the "Zero Waste Alliance", believes that "degradable plastic bags" are not a "panacea" to solve plastic bag pollution. He said that most of the fully biodegradable plastic products on the market are degradable under industrial composting conditions, not natural conditions. In addition, there is a lack of clear standards at present, and many "degradable packaging" on the market may be petrochemical raw materials containing additives that enhance biodegradability, or a mixture of the two, which can only be partially degraded.

"Even if it is truly fully degradable, the general public does not have the ability and will not actually separate degradable bags from ordinary plastic bags. Cities also lack a separate recycling and processing system, and degradable bags are actually not degraded, and still enter landfills or incinerators like ordinary plastic bags." Mao Da said.

Ji Junhui said that, especially in the ocean, due to the low temperature, small number of specific microorganisms, the biodegradation rate is significantly slower than that in the soil. China currently does not have relevant technologies and products for the marine degradation of bioplastics.

However, technological progress has provided a new path for the recycling and reuse of waste plastics. According to Ji Junhui, the thermomechanical low-pressure molding technology they developed can produce waste plastic mixtures (polyolefin mixtures with a content of not less than 80%) that could not be recycled in the past into plastic products such as engineering pipes, floor tiles, and building templates.

According to statistics, this grade of plastic waste accounts for more than 40% of all waste, including plastic waste containing biomass such as domestic waste, small particles of metal, and soil, small stones and inorganic matter, such as agricultural waste such as greenhouse film and ground film, and domestic waste such as beverage packaging. In this way, the proportion of plastic waste resource utilization can be increased from the current 35% to 75%-80%.

In July 2017, the General Office of the State Council issued an implementation plan for prohibiting the entry of foreign garbage and promoting the reform of the solid waste import management system. "With the gradual ban on imported waste plastics, China's environmental protection requirements have increased dramatically. It is necessary to deeply explore China's waste plastic resources and improve the construction of a recycling system." Ji Junhui suggested that China should strengthen recycling and do a good job of classification at the source, form a policy-led, recycling site-based, sorting and processing centers, and use clustered sorting centers and processing centers as nodes to form a waste plastic recycling and processing network and industrial chain. It is also necessary to study the refined classification of waste plastics and the key common technologies for plastic recycling, and upgrade to high value-added products.

Industry experts said that in addition to adopting technical means, raising the public's awareness of banning plastics and establishing a new concept of environmental protection should also be given equal attention and implemented simultaneously. In this regard, regulatory and law enforcement departments should intervene at the same time, publicly criticize companies and merchants, especially e-commerce companies, that provide plastic packaging for free. In serious cases, they can be blacklisted and have their business licenses revoked; carry out environmentally friendly packaging feedback activities in physical stores and e-commerce platforms, encourage users to report the phenomenon of excessive use of plastic packaging to regulatory departments, and give corresponding rewards or praise; regularly organize screenings of films about plastic pollution in communities or village committees, publicize or distribute limited quantities of bags and packaging boxes made of environmentally friendly materials; cooperate with relevant companies to improve the quality and "appearance" of environmentally friendly materials, so that consumers will fall in love with environmentally friendly products. (Reporter Li He)

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