Ban on Importing Industrial Waste Plastics

On April 19, Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China released the announcement on amending Catalogues of Imported Wastes Management. In order to better manage the imports of the solid wastes so as to prevent and control the environmental pollution, this management was made according to the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Solid Waste Pollution, Managements on the Imports of Solid Waste and other related laws and regulations.

16 types of solid waste, including scrap metals, vessels, compressed auto pieces, steel slag and post-industrial plastics were classified from the Catalogues of Restricted Solid Waste as raw materials, which doesn’t include any kind of waste plastic up to now, into the Ban Catalogues of Imported Solid Waste. And this will implement from December 31, 2018.

Industrial waste plastics will be banned nine months later, after the ban on importing household waste plastics in July, 2017. Up to now, 10 tables of restricted types have been published, and the state-sanctioned import volume is only 9,191mt.

From the above chart, the import volume in South China, especially in Foshan and Shixing, accounted for over 50% of the total volume, and that in East China, especially in Shanghai and Ningbo accounted for 35%. The import volumes in North and China Central China both were lower than 10%.