InfoGraphic

Plastic bag ban yet to be enforced

By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-29 15:45

Discarded plastic bags litter the dried river bed at Shangxi, a small village hidden in the mountains some 140 kilometers away from the picturesque city of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. [China Daily]

Keeping watch

Research carried out last year by the EnviroFriends Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, a non-governmental organization, also discovered the ban was being ignored.

"It does not look good," said Mao Da, a PhD student and member of the institute, who was part of a team that visited markets in six provincial capitals - Beijing, Guangzhou in Guangdong, Harbin in Heilongjiang, Lanzhou in Gansu, Hangzhou in Zhejiang and Chengdu in Sichuan.

"More than 71 percent of groceries and farmers' markets in Beijing do not follow the ban, resulting in them accounting for 50 percent of the total consumption of plastic bags in the city's urban areas," he said. "The proportion could be even higher in surrounding rural areas.

"We have kept a close eye on the whole process during the past two years and found the effects (of the ban) have gradually worn off over time," said Mao.

Such statistics, said Dong, show that supervision and management of local markets is the biggest challenge facing the regulations.

"The dilemma has been caused by many factors. Government business and industrial bureaus, market organizers, vendors and shoppers all need to take some responsibility when it comes to reducing the rampant usage of low-quality plastic bags," said the association chief.

Although working with limited resources, quality supervision departments are still failing in their basic duty of halting production at the small, illegal plastic workshops hidden across most major Chinese cities," Dong said.

"There are more than 1,000 plastic bag factories in Hebei province alone," he said. "Two thirds were shut down by authorities before the 2008 Olympics but now most of them are up and running again at top gear. It's time for the authorities to change their methods."

Commercial and industrial bureaus are responsible for enforcing the ban and carrying out regular checks at the smallest of markets to the largest of department stores.

"We have confiscated more than 620,000 plastic bags during 25,000 market inspections in the last two years," said Luo Yuanming, director of markets for the Guangzhou commercial and industrial bureau. "But, in truth, enforcement of this law is too difficult.

"We prohibited (companies that make the) plastic bags from selling low-quality plastic bags in the markets, so the vendors began to connect with them over the phone. We also fine vendors who give out free bags but the problem is they all do it," he said.

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Dong suggested that market organizers be forced to sign agreements with the bureau that they will only buy bags from approved factories and distributors. "Those that don't comply should be punished," he said.

However, supervising the ban solely with administrative power is impossible, argued Luo, who added: "We must investigate the production and raise public awareness of environmental protection."

After two years of research, Mao Da and his colleagues at the EnviroFriends Institute say they believe it could be the State Council's policy that is flawed.

China still has no national standard for the pricing of plastic bags, while the zero-tolerance attitude towards bags thinner than 0.025 mm is impractical for smaller markets, said Mao.

"The increase in plastic bag usage is a hint that policymakers should reconsider and take the challenges posed by different markets into account," he said. "We need more realistic and effective policies on the issue now that the effect of the ban is wearing off."

Experts have also called on authorities to get more involved in checking the success of the policy, with most studies currently being conducted by environmental groups and NGOs.

Vendors in most farmers' markets and wet markets in major Chinese cities usually offer their customers free plastic bags despite the ban, for fear of losing business. [China Daily]