Why China decided to introduce new regulations on plastic waste

China stopped accepting imports of most foreign plastic waste and paper on Jan 1.

On July 18 last year, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, announced new regulations banning the import of foreign waste.

On the same day, China told the World Trade Organization it would no longer accept imports of 24 types of solid waste, including unsorted waste paper, textiles and plastics by the end of 2017, according to a WTO document.

The ban was proposed because of the “large amounts of dirty or even hazardous waste” polluting the environment, the document stated.

China has been a major processing center for waste for many decades, with imported waste recycled to provide raw materials for the manufacturing sector.

In 2016, more than 43 million metric tons of scrap iron and steel, nonferrous metals, paper and plastics were imported, with nonferrous metals alone valued at $8.42 billion, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

The US exported more than 37 million tons of scrap commodities valued at $16.5 billion to 155 countries in 2016. China accounted for almost one-third of that total, about $5.2 billion.

Every day, some 3,700 shipping containers full of recyclables were trucked to US ports, loaded onto ships and sent to China.

The items in those containers included plastics, metal, paper, cardboard and textiles, which Chinese manufacturers used as raw materials, Bloomberg News reported.