More Than Four Years After China's Plastic Bag Restrictions, Express Delivery Boom Puts Foamed Plastic Cushioning Back in Focus

Environmental pollution is drawing growing public attention, with waste recovery and reuse now a key concern. Foamed plastic—difficult to recycle and difficult to reuse—has become a leading culprit in white pollution after plastic bags.

On December 31, 2007, the General Office of the State Council issued a notice restricting the production, sale and use of plastic shopping bags, commonly called the 'plastic restriction order.' The stated reason was that while plastic shopping bags offer convenience to consumers, excessive use and inadequate recycling and disposal also cause serious energy and resource waste and environmental pollution.

More than four years after the order took effect, an official from the Department of Resource Conservation and Environmental Protection of the National Development and Reform Commission said annual plastic shopping bag use at major commodity retail outlets nationwide has fallen by more than 24 billion units. Cumulative plastic consumption dropped by 800,000 tons—equivalent to saving 4.8 million tons of oil, or one-eighth of the Daqing Oilfield's annual output. The results are highly encouraging.

One trend deserves attention, however: the rapid growth of the express delivery industry has brought a strong resurgence in plastic product use, and many fragile items are packaged with foamed plastic as cushioning material. As is widely known, discarded foam plastic is bulky, and waste sorting and recycling channels are not yet fully developed, so the resulting pollution should not be underestimated. Yet because foamed plastic is low-cost and easy to use, some online stores continue to use it.

In China, waste sorting and recycling still need time to advance, while the government attaches great importance to pollution control. It is therefore recommended that the circulation and use of logistics cushioning packaging materials be further regulated. More environmentally friendly alternatives are already on the market, such as expanded polypropylene, honeycomb paperboard and molded pulp products, and a recycling mechanism for such cushioning packaging materials is urgently needed—for example, adding cushioning packaging materials as a recycling category in scrap collection so these green materials can be widely promoted. At the same time, foamed plastic should be banned, and a reporting hotline should be set up at relevant departments to minimize white pollution as much as possible.

Reposted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362024.html