China's waste import ban, instated at the end of 2017, prevented foreign inflows of waste products. Starting in early 2018, the government of China, under Operation National Sword, banned the import of several types of waste, including plastics. The ban has greatly affected recycling industries worldwide, as China had been the world's largest importer of waste plastics and processed hard-to-recycle plastics for other countries, especially in the West.
The decision caused widespread repercussions on a global scale. In July 2018, China produced a document to the World Trade Organization regarding environmental and health issues. China requested an urgent change to be made revolving the imported waste China imports from other countries. The recommended list was pushing forward for wastes such as plastics, textile, and paper products to be banned from imports.
Background
China is the largest importer of waste plastics, accounting for 56% of the global market. Meanwhile, the United States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are the main source countries. Since 2010, China has begun to implement more stringent waste import policies that correspond with the quality of import waste and improvement of domestic production capacity. Likewise, environmental and health considerations have led China to introduce the waste import policy in 2017 which bans the import of 24 types of solid waste, including certain types of plastics, paper, and textiles. Based on a study by the University of Georgia, it is predicted that by 2030 with this policy, 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be left unaccounted for.
Chinese plastic history
In the 1990s, economic development and the rise in living standards increased China's demand for plastic products by 21% annually. However, in that year, China lacked raw materials, and the production quality was incapable of meeting to the growing needs. Moreover, they did not have an efficient recycling system, and waste was collected through an informal recycling network.
From 1980 to 1994, the recycling rate of waste products in China fell by 11%, which brought about pressure on the municipality. In some big cities, a large number of waste plastics were not being recycled and led to a strain on the urban drainage system blockage. According to statistics, about 60% of plastic waste in China was discarded or not recycled at that time. In 1994, China's agricultural film consumption was 1.9 million tons, but 300,000 tons of agricultural film remained in farmland every year, affecting the soil and causing animal diseases.
In the early 21st century, China had become the second largest plastic producer in the world, second to the US. However, China's domestic productivity still could not meet their demand for plastics. Furthermore, the rising crude oil prices at the time also led to the inflation of the price of pure plastics. At the same time, although the price of waste plastics had also increased, waste plastics were still relatively cheap when compared to virgin plastics. Thus, in order to cope with demand and lower costs, the import of waste was increased again. This led China to rely heavily on the import of waste. Furthermore, this made other countries in the world dependent on China's imports of waste plastics.
The Green Fence Operation
The quality of recyclable materials exported to China gradually declined; on the contrary, large amounts of waste entering China was mixed with food, garbage, and other pollutants. These unmanageable waste products have thus burdened the Chinese government. Similarly, the profitability of the waste industry has attracted speculators to invest in the market. In order to enhance the management of the market and the reduction of illegal traffic, the Chinese government had decided to implement the green fence operation. It is said that this operation was the result of the China customs enforcing action against the law governing from February to November 2013. This initiative was designed to monitor the quality and flow of incoming waste and combat smuggling. It was reported that in just five months, China customs had seized 337 cases of solid waste smuggling amounting to 1.7 billion RMB.
According to the regulations of the China Waste Plastics Association, import license transactions are prohibited, and imported waste plastics must be delivered to factories with import qualifications in accordance with the provisions of the import license. Since countries are dependent on China's waste imports, this action had adversely affected the entire value chain of waste plastics and exporting countries.