The Chinese Government has said that it wants its people to sort their material for recycling.
While China has been improving its domestic recycling infrastructure, there is still great potential in the country to extract materials from its domestic waste stream.
In a series of new environmental measures announced at the end of April that will seek to reduce the pollution and environmental damage caused by rapid industrialisation over the last couple of decades, China’s National People’s Congress voted to adopt a policy of environmental protection on economic and social development.
In a statement, the Chinese Government said: “The law gives harsher punishments to environmental wrongdoing, and has specific articles and provisions on tackling smog, making citizen’s more aware of environmental protection and protecting whistleblowers.
“It says citizens should adopt a low-carbon and frugal lifestyle and perform environmental protection duties, and nominates 5 June as Environment Day.
“The public is encouraged to observe environmental protection laws and make their own efforts in this regard, including sorting their garbage for recycling.
“The revised law will go into effect from 1 January 2015.”
Almost all of the 70 articles in the revised Environmental Protection Law – the first update to the legislation for 25 years – relate to domestic incidences of pollution and environmental damage.
It isn’t yet clear whether there will be any impact on the import of recycled materials by the Chinese, but as subscribers of Resource Efficient Business Intelligence will know, the Chinese Green Fence has been gradually wound down over the past two or three months so that the inspection regime is largely back to how it was previously.
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