In November 2022, Mainland China and INBAR jointly launched the "Bamboo instead of Plastic" initiative. Photo courtesy of Visual China
On June 8, in the southeast of Qian, Guizhou, students from Congjiang County Ethnic Special Education School learned the art of intangible cultural heritage bamboo weaving. Photo courtesy of Visual China
On June 2, at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, 175 countries finally reached a consensus after a week of difficult negotiations as the hammer of recycled plastic wielded by UNEP President Espen Barth Eide fell, agreeing to complete the first draft of the Global Plastic Pollution Treaty by November this year and submit it to the next meeting for discussion. The treaty aims to reduce global plastic pollution by 80% by 2040.
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The British "Guardian" believes that the new treaty will be another extremely important green agreement for the international community since the conclusion of the Paris international climate agreement in 2015. Wen Xuefeng, deputy director of the Department of Solid Waste and Chemicals of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said that the prevention and control of plastic pollution is a major environmental challenge facing the international community, and the Chinese government attaches great importance to plastic pollution control, continues to implement full-chain governance, and has achieved positive results.
The second largest environmental focus in the world
"Plastic pollution has become the second largest environmental focus issue in the world after climate change, bringing great challenges to global sustainable development." Wang Yonggang, secretary-general of the Recycled Plastics Branch of the China Materials Recycling Association, recently told China Youth Daily that data from the United Nations Environment Programme shows that the global cumulative production of about 9.2 billion tons of plastics between 1950 and 2017 is expected to increase to 34 billion tons by 2050, and the annual plastic waste generation is about 300 million tons.
Many experts and scholars have noticed the harm caused by plastics, because plastics are derived from fossil fuels and rich in various chemicals, which will cause a series of hazards to the environment and human health throughout their life cycle.
The production of plastics causes a lot of problems. NBC reported on March 16 that there is an area known as "Cancer Valley" between Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, and New Orleans. It's a community of mostly minority colors, and a synthetic rubber factory has been emitting into the air for decades chloroprene, a chemical that federal regulators consider potentially carcinogenic. According to the EPA, Cancer Valley has been the nation's highest-risk area for most of the past 10 years. In 2014, the risk of cancer was about 50 times higher than the national average; At present, it is still nearly 7 times the national average.
In addition, waste plastics that are discarded arbitrarily will also affect the ecological environment. Melanie Bergman, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany who has studied plastic pollution for years, said her research progress was severely delayed because of the large amount of plastic debris on the deep seafloor of the Arctic. She found microplastics in Arctic sea ice, inside algae, tiny zooplankton and samples of deep-sea sediments.
"Microplastics are plastic fragments that are less than 5 millimeters in diameter." Li Jinghong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Academic Committee of the Department of Chemistry of Tsinghua University, told the China Youth Daily that studies have shown that the global per capita intake of plastic is about 5 grams per week, equivalent to 2,000 fragments, which not only endangers human health but also affects the global environment.
Many island residents face an even more severe plastic pollution situation. According to CNN, the sea between the Hawaiian Islands and California in the United States is a huge amount of plastic waste, covering an area of about 1.6 million square kilometers, known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch". Ocean Cleanup, an international non-profit organization, estimates that the garbage patch contains more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic waste. As ocean currents change, this garbage drifts to Pacific island countries such as the Marshall Islands. "The island nation can't handle this plastic waste, and the hills they make have become the highest 'peak' on the island." Farnaya Navadra, Director-General of the South Pacific Regional Environment Agency, said.
The Paris negotiations remain deeply divided
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, more than 400 million tons of plastic are produced globally each year, less than 10% of which is recycled, and more than 20 million tons of plastic end up polluting lakes, rivers and oceans. Microplastics are also found in air, drinking water and even human blood.
To address this issue, in March 2022, the Fifth UN Environment Assembly reached a historic resolution to end plastic pollution, agreeing to form a legally binding international agreement by 2024. From the end of November to the beginning of December last year, the first intergovernmental negotiations of the United Nations on the global fight against plastic pollution were held in Uruguay. The Paris Conference on 2 June was the second intergovernmental negotiation.
According to the British newspaper The Guardian, although member states have basically reached agreement in the negotiations on topics such as reducing microplastics, circular design, and encouraging the reuse of plastic products, there are still major differences on specific matters including whether to set a cap on plastic production capacity, whether the production capacity of "problematic plastics" should be reduced, and whether international treaties set plastic pollution control targets or countries set their own targets.
Bjorn Bühler, international coordinator of the International Pollutant Elimination Network, accused developed countries, including the United States, of exporting plastic waste to countries and regions such as Latin America and Africa that do not produce large amounts of plastic or chemicals, "which is unfair." Wang Yonggang also said that the plastic recycling rate in these countries and regions is relatively low, and the risk of environmental leakage is large, which has become a short board in global plastic pollution control, and the export of "plastic waste" to them should be prohibited. At the same time, developed countries and international organizations should provide them with appropriate assistance in terms of capital, technology, management and human resources.
According to the British Reuters report, the American Chemistry Council and European and other lobby groups formed the "Plastic Pollution Action Enterprise" coalition to "greenwash" plastic behavior. The U.S. side is accused of being lobbied by interest groups and failing to demonstrate responsibility for tackling plastics in the negotiations. On June 6, more than 100 nongovernmental organizations, experts and scholars in the United States jointly issued an open letter calling on the EPA to limit the lobbying activities of interest groups. The letter states that "there is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the plastics industry and those affected by the plastics crisis".
"China Solution" contributes oriental wisdom
On June 5, Eric Lindbjerg, WWF's head of global plastics policy, posted a message welcoming the outcome of the Paris talks, saying that "as countries around the world prepare to legislate for plastic pollution, this is a huge opportunity to develop an environmental agreement that really has a positive impact on people's lives."
In fact, China has long been committed to tackling plastic pollution through technological innovation and integrated strategies. In September 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for Plastic Pollution Control. It is clear that by 2025, the plastic pollution control mechanism should operate more effectively, local, departmental and enterprise responsibilities should be effectively implemented, the whole chain of plastic products production, circulation, consumption, recycling and terminal disposal should be more significant, and "white pollution" should be effectively curbed.
"Although the situation of plastic pollution control is very serious, plastic materials are not equal to pollutants, and the essence of plastic pollution is environmental leakage caused by improper management of plastic waste." Li Jinghong pointed out that after years of efforts, the mainland has established a relatively complete waste plastic recycling system, waste plastic recycling and recycling capacity and output are in the world's leading position, recycling waste plastic capacity accounts for about 70% of the world's total.
In 2021, the total amount of recycled waste plastics in mainland China was about 19 million tons, with a recycling rate of 31%. This rate is nearly 1.74 times the global average over the same period. As of June 2022, the number of enterprises engaged in the recycling and recycling of waste plastics in mainland China exceeded 15,000, with about 900,000 employees.
Wang Yonggang said that at present, the world's major economic and populous countries are prohibiting, restricting and replacing the use of plastic products. In November 2022, the Chinese government and INBAR jointly launched the "Bamboo instead of Plastic" initiative to promote cooperation on replacing plastic products with bamboo around the world, promote the reduction of plastic pollution, and provide nature-based oriental solutions to the problem of plastic pollution.
Compared with plastic products, bamboo has good toughness, strong plasticity, short growth cycle, convenient planting, and has the natural advantage of replacing plastic. As a green, low-carbon, fast-growing, renewable and degradable biomass material, bamboo can directly replace some non-biodegradable plastic products in packaging, building materials and other fields. John Cobb, Jr., an academician of the National Academy of Humanities, said that finding plastic alternatives is an effective way to reduce plastic use and reduce plastic pollution at the source, and is an urgent global response to the plastic pollution crisis. The initiative of "replacing plastic with bamboo" is of great practical significance and makes positive contributions to promoting sustainable development. Eric Lindbjerg, head of global plastics policy at WWF, believes that finding alternatives to plastic is important and that bamboo and rattan offer a solution, and that now is the time for all parties to develop the right concrete measures and regulations to achieve the necessary changes.
In order to better control plastic pollution, as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at this year's National People's Political Consultative Conference, Li Jinghong, brought a proposal on improving the recycling system of soft plastics. He pointed out that behind the high material recycling rate of waste plastics in the mainland, nearly 70% of waste plastics are still landfilled or incinerated, including a large number of soft plastics, that is, plastic bags and express packaging bags that can be found everywhere in daily life. He suggested that from the front-end design of flexible packaging products, fully consider easy recyclability and easy recyclability, improve the recycling system, explore business operation models, strengthen the technology research and development and innovation of soft plastic recycling, and promote the linkage of all links of the recycling industry chain.
"Now is the time to act, and each of us has a role to play." UN Resident Coordinator in China Chatter, Choe Tak, called for a June 5 event on World Environment Day. Now, 175 countries are waiting for another breakthrough in the third intergovernmental negotiations on global plastic pollution in Nairobi in November, which will be a crucial step in meeting the treaty by the end of 2024. Wang Yonggang pointed out that the fight against plastic pollution requires the establishment of a sense of a community with a shared future for mankind, and the whole world needs to unite to take positive actions, because "plastic pollution is a common challenge facing mankind, and no country can be left alone."
Beijing, 13 Jun (Jiefangjun Bao) --
Liu Yinheng, trainee reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network
(Source: China Youth Daily)
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