Starting January 1, 2018, China's ban on the import of foreign waste officially took effect. This ban covers 24 types of solid waste in four categories, including waste plastics from household waste, unsorted waste paper, and waste textile materials. The document explicitly states the reason for the ban: "The illegal entry of foreign waste has been a persistent problem, seriously endangering the health of the people and the safety of China's ecological environment." This is just the beginning; by the end of 2019, China will gradually stop importing all solid waste that can be replaced by domestic resources. Clearly, the Chinese government's fundamental attitude towards foreign waste has changed. Recycled metals and plastics are cheaper than virgin materials. Fundamentally, China's status as a global manufacturing center, and the resulting massive demand for cheap raw materials, has determined that China has continuously imported large quantities of solid waste from abroad for decades. According to data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (Comtrade), in 2015, more than 70% of the world's waste plastics and 37% of waste paper were exported to China. European countries and the United States are the main sources of these wastes. This supply chain has continued naturally because every link in it is profitable. For developed countries, the cost of domestic processing is approximately $400 to $1,000 per ton. However, even with shipping costs, the cost to China is only $10 to $40 per ton. Chinese recipients buy this waste at extremely low prices, sort and classify it multiple times, and then resell it through various layers of distribution, forming self-contained industrial chains at the bottom of the global value chain. Therefore, "Chinese recycling" not only provides a cheap solution to Western countries' waste problems but also becomes a crucial factor in maintaining the cost advantage of China's low-end manufacturing industry. The long-term and large-scale import of foreign waste has led to a "two-tiered" structure in China's waste recycling industry—foreign waste enters formal, high-quality disposal facilities, forming a large industrial chain; he recently surveyed two recycled plastic companies in Shandong and Fujian, both of which have first-class processing capabilities and management levels; entering their workshops is like entering a sample standard library. On the other hand, domestically generated, lower-quality, and poorly sorted waste is recycled in some less-regulated small factories or even workshops. In other words, China's formal recycling industry is accustomed to processing imported waste that meets standards. Is it feasible to force them to switch to processing lower-quality, unsorted waste in the short term? With the import of foreign waste blocked, the recycling industry will have to focus on establishing and developing its own domestic recycling system. Fully utilizing domestic resources with high-quality processing capacity will significantly reduce the proportion and quantity of waste entering small workshops. In the long run, the ultimate goal of the ban is undoubtedly to improve the recycling rate of solid waste in China, and even force the implementation of front-end waste sorting, promoting the development of a circular economy. The manufacturing industry currently has three options: foreign recycled resources, domestic recycled resources, and new materials. With the increase in China's energy resource tax rate, the cost of new raw materials is rising. After the ban on foreign waste, the raw material supply gap in the recycling industry can only be filled by domestic waste, which will force domestic waste processing to improve its back-end processing, and further force front-end residential communities to improve waste sorting. Greenpeace East Asia also believes that stopping the import of foreign waste will drive the development of the domestic solid waste processing and recycling industry and waste sorting and recycling. Taking the waste plastics industry as an example, China's annual imports of waste plastics surged from 300,000 tons in 1992 to 7.34 million tons in 2016. If imports were to cease, Chinese waste plastics companies would face a raw material shortage of millions of tons annually, which would need to be filled through domestic waste sorting and solid waste recycling systems. However, Du Huanzheng, a professor at the College of Environment and Sustainable Development at Tongji University, expressed skepticism. He stated that the insufficient amount of domestic recyclable waste is the fundamental reason for China's imports of waste. In other words, the reality is that even with comprehensive efforts to promote household waste sorting in China, the amount of recyclable waste still cannot meet market demand. Regarding the root cause of the contradiction—environmental issues—Du Huanzheng believes that the fundamental question is how to improve the solid waste disposal industry. As long as large-scale processing companies can guarantee wastewater treatment, air quality management, and occupational health, there should be no complete ban on waste imports. Industry stakeholders also believe that a sound market should allow imports, but only if they meet Chinese regulations and standards. These environmental standards can be set very high, because as China's economic development level increases, the cost of environmental damage should also increase. Source: ChinaDialogue (March 13, 2018) (Compiled by PIDC)
