China's plastic bag usage is phenomenal, even for a country with the population of 1.3 billion. Three billion plastic bags are used every day in China, amounting to 1.6 million tonnes each year. The Chinese government wants to reduce this amount to 1.1 million tonnes per year, with limits on packaging coming into force on the 1st June this year.
The ultra thin plastic bags of 0.0.25mm in thickness, commonly used for takeaways, have been banned as it is these that are consumed at a shocking rate. Shoppers requiring a plastic bag will have to pay for a more substantial bag. The government will fine retailers 10,000 yuan, or £715, for giving away free plastic bags, a third of what they initially planned to charge.
The ban comes as a response to plastic bags filling landfill sites, suffocating and choking animals and killing a panda in Beijing Zoo which swallowed a plastic bag of food thrown into his pen by a visitor.
Cloth bags will be sold in large supermarkets to fulfil packaging needs, although Greenpeace doubt China's ability to implement and enforce their ambitious environmental law.
China is still battling with air pollution in Beijing in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer. The Olympic Village is still smoggy the majority of the time although drastic improvements have been made. In the nine years since China won their bid to host the games air quality has continually improved, with 73.6 per cent of days having blue skies in the spring this year, the highest percentage in 9 years. The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau has ordered high polluters in and around the city to scale down or halt production as well shutting down the highest polluters during the summer games. Beijing has so far failed to quash athletes' concerns over air quality, particularly those of marathon runners.
China's president Hu Jintao is looking to neighbours Japan to help them improve their environment with the use of new technology invented in their fellow Asian country. After touring the Kawasaki PET Bottle Recycling Factory near Tokyo, the premier agreed with Japanese PM Yasuo Fukuda to work together to combat global warming and share technologies that will help them to do so.
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Posted under Articles, Environmental News
This post was written by Grace Simpson on June 3, 2008