China bans ultra-thin plastic bags
Updated
The Chinese government has imposed a ban on ultra-thin plastic bags in a bid to reduce pollution and litter in time for the olympic games. It's also forcing retailers to charge customers for regular plastic bags, in an effort to reduce consumption.
Presenter: Stephanie March
Speakers: Sze Pang Chung, communications director of Greenpeace China; Zhang Jun, director of the China Centre for Economic Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
MARCH: Three billion plastic bags are used each day in China.
That works out to be more than one trillion per year.
And unfortunately for the environment the majority of those bags are only used once, and often end up littering the country's streets and waterways.
ZHANG: you can easily find a lot of trash with the plastic bags being scattering in the street all over the city or town
MARCH: Professor Zhang Jun is the director of the China Centre for Economic Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
He says people in all parts of China are very accustomed to using plastic bags and most people go grocery shopping at least once a day.
ZHANG: chinese need to shop every day or even twice or three times a day. so they need to go buy the fresh vegetable every morning or every afternoon, so is not like the western people who go shopping maybe once a week or twice a week
MARCH: Despite the country's dependency on them, the government has introduced a ban on the ultra thin plastic bags often used to wrap up takeaway food, and are forcing retailers to charge customers for using sturdier ones.
Sze Pang Chung is the communications director for Greenpeace China.
SZE: What we call the ultra-thin bag the reason the Chinese government is banning that is because there is no reusable purpose for those ultra-thin plastic bags. Its so thin and the quality is so weak you can only use it once then you have to throw it away. The whole regulation is introduced to encourage people to reuse plastic bags and those kind of bags cannot be reusable.
MARCH: An online survey of Beijing residents reports that around 50 percent of people say they will try to stop using plastic bags, while the other half are happy to pay for the privilege.
Sze Pang Chung says the move is still a great step towards reducing the environmental damage caused by the bags that languish in landfills or rubbish piles for years before they break down.
But he warns while it may be easy to enforce the regulations in major cities, it might be difficult in smaller towns and regional areas.
SZE: China has been struggling with implementing its environmental regulations for many years. Particularly in local areas it comes down to whether the local government has the same determination to implement the law, whether there is enough resources and human power to actually enforce the law, and in the smaller towns and cities there isn't much consumer awareness on this ban - a lot of people still haven't heard about it.
MARCH: But while the news is good for the environment, it's not for the tens of thousands of people employed in China's plastic bag manufacturing industry.
SZE: we have already heard some factories will be shutting down because of the reduction in consumption.
MARCH: When the planned ban was announced last January, the Huaqing Plastic Factory - what used to be China's biggest plastic bag manufacturer - sacked 20,000 workers.
And Professor Zhang says the move will also have an impact on the smaller producers.
ZHANG: most of the plastic bag producers were actually the small producers, or the family run business in most of ...... the eastern provinces, so I suspect that this new policy will be very bad for the small producers.
MARCH: But Professor Zhang says those smaller producers do have other options.
ZHANG: you know producing the plastic bag doesn't require much technology or investment or equipment so it is not difficult fro them to shift from one business to another.
