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Environment
BusinessChina Business

No plastic bags, straws, or hotel shampoo bottles by 2025 as China embarks on journey to reduce and replace polluting material

  • By the year’s end, a ban in China will take effect on the production and sale of disposable foamed plastic tableware, straws and plastic cotton buds
  • Non-biodegradable plastic bags, free disposable plastic products at hotels and the plastic packaging of courier deliverers must all go by 2025

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By the year’s end, a ban will take effect on the production and sale of disposable foamed plastic tableware, straws and plastic cotton buds. Illustration: Perry Tse
Eric Ng
China, the biggest producer of plastic waste on the planet, is poised to kick off a five-year plan to reduce and replace the pollutant, in an ambitious programme with far-reaching implications on the nation’s supply chain, while creating billions of dollars of new business opportunities.
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By the year’s end, a ban will take effect on the production and sale of disposable foamed plastic tableware, straws and plastic cotton buds. Non-biodegradable plastic bags will go in phases starting this year, expanding nationwide by 2025. Hotels must stop handing out free disposal plastic products, while couriers are instructed to stop using non-biodegradable plastic packaging by 2025.

The drastic action points could not have come sooner, as China’s mountain of mismanaged, or inadequately disposed, plastic wastes – projected at 26 per cent of global total by 2025 according to scientific research cited by University of Oxford – have damaged the environment irreparably. Of the 63 million tonnes of plastic wastes China produced last year, 30 per cent were recycled, 32 per cent went into landfills, 31 per cent were burnt and 7 per cent were abandoned, according to the China National Resources Recycling Association.

“Compared to practices in Europe and many other nations, this new policy framework is the most comprehensive in the world and will provide good reference value for other nations,” said Zhao Kai, vice-chairman of the China Association of Circular Economy (CACE), a state-backed body that supports the government’s resource conservation and environmental protection policy formulation and implementation.

Recyclers sorting out plastic bottles in Dongxiaokou, a small village on the outskirts of Beijing, the destination for most of the recyclable waste in the Chinese capital where 700 families work through the pile. Photo Corbis via Getty Images
Recyclers sorting out plastic bottles in Dongxiaokou, a small village on the outskirts of Beijing, the destination for most of the recyclable waste in the Chinese capital where 700 families work through the pile. Photo Corbis via Getty Images
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China’s journey to cut plastic waste actually began in 2018, when the country that imported half of the world’s recyclable plastic refuse banned the practice, forcing waste exporters like Japan and the United States to find new ways to deal with their garbage.

Recycling supported a huge processing industry in China, from the e-waste recyclers of Guangdong province to one of the country’s wealthiest women in Nine Dragons Holdings, but took a huge toll on the environment. Left unchecked, China will have up to 17.8 million tonnes of littered plastic waste to deal with by 2025, the projection cited by Oxford shows. It’s not just China’s problem. East Asia and South Asia contributed 71 per cent of global mismanaged plastic wastes in 2015, according to the university’s data.
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