"At present, disposable plastic bags and lunch boxes have the greatest impact on the environment, with an annual output of 2 million tons. Because of the difficulty in recycling, most of them are mixed in domestic garbage, which is usually directly burned or landfilled, and some of them remain in the environment, while traditional plastics are almost difficult to degrade in the natural environment. " Ma, vice chairman of China Plastics Processing Industry Association, told the First Financial Reporter.
In 2008, China promulgated the "Plastic Ban Order". Five years later, in 20 13, the national development and reform commission revealed that the use of plastic shopping bags in supermarkets and shopping malls generally decreased by more than two-thirds, and the use of plastic shopping bags in major retail places nationwide decreased by 67 billion. However, with the development of new consumption formats such as Internet ordering, the consumption of disposable plastic products is rising again, which poses a challenge to the carrying capacity of the environment.
Online ordering and express delivery have greatly increased the use of plastics.
"China's steel production has exceeded 700 million tons, and China's plastic consumption is 654.38 billion tons. If calculated by volume, the volume of the two of them is equivalent. " The horse said:
At the beginning of 20 17, the World Economic Forum "New Plastics Economics" reported that the use of plastics has increased by 20 times in the past half century and is expected to double again in the next 20 years.
So much plastic is used, but human's ability to handle plastic is limited.
"Plastic packaging accounts for 20%-30% of the entire plastic market, but most disposable plastic products used for packaging are not recycled, especially plastic bags. Because it is difficult to recycle and the reuse value is not great, it is generally buried with garbage. Express plastic bags are basically not recycled, because recycling costs are high and recycling is difficult. Moreover, most of the express plastic bags are waste plastics, which are already being recycled, and the recycling value is not great. " The horse said:
In order to slow down the production of white garbage, on February 3, 2007, the General Office of the State Council issued the Notice on Restricting the Production, Sale and Use of Plastic Shopping Bags (hereinafter referred to as the "Plastic Restriction Order"), requiring that the production, sale and use of plastic shopping bags with a thickness of less than 0.025mm be prohibited nationwide from June, 2008.
This "plastic limit order" really played its due role. Five years after its release, the use of plastic shopping bags in supermarkets and shopping malls for offline consumption has generally decreased by more than two-thirds. However, with the rise of the new format of online consumption, the original "plastic restriction order" still lacks effective optimization and update on the restrictions on the use of plastic products for online ordering and online shopping express delivery.
At the beginning of 20 17, BigData-Research released a report showing that 20176150 million yuan, and the domestic and international sales markets maintained a rapid growth trend, with an increase of 362150 million yuan compared with 20 15. Taking the fast-rising Internet ordering as an example, a person in charge in Meituan.com told the First Financial Reporter that according to the average usage of two lunch boxes per order, the number of plastic lunch boxes used by domestic Internet ordering platforms is about 40 million every day.
In addition, with the rapid development of the express delivery industry, plastic products such as packaging bags and tapes are used more and more.
According to the 20 16 report on the development status and trend of green packaging in China express delivery field, the express delivery industry in China consumes about 8.268 billion plastic bags, 0.6985 million meters of adhesive tape and 2.977 billion internal buffers. According to the latest estimate, in 20 16 years, the express delivery industry will use 0/200 million plastic bags and 24.7 billion meters of sealing tape.
"The plastic bags used in the express delivery industry are thicker than those used in shopping malls, and most of them are recycled plastic bags, which have no recycling value and can only be directly treated as garbage." The horse said:
"The recycled materials with clear sources and reasonable recycling are processed into plastic express bags. The essence is the reuse and reduction of plastics, which is beneficial to the environment. This practice should be encouraged. After the express bag is used up, it should be recycled. If conditions do not allow, it can only be buried. Recycled plastics obtained through reasonable recycling have little negative impact on human health. Because it is buried as garbage, it will not affect the soil and water and will not cause serious pollution to nature. It's hard to say without recycling. " The horse said:
Poor plastic recycling channels
It has become a global challenge to deal with the accumulated problem after the large increase in the use of plastics. According to the above-mentioned report in New Plastics Economics, at present, only 14% of global plastic packaging is recycled, and only 10% is effectively recycled. Another 30% of plastic packaging (by weight) is used for landfill, incineration or energy recovery.
In China, although transparent polypropylene plastic lunch boxes can be recycled, the recycling value is not great because of the trouble of cleaning, and the recycling amount of recycling enterprises is also very small. A number of renewable resource recycling companies have indicated that they are not interested in selling foamed lunch boxes, plastic bags and disposable chopsticks. These wastes can only be treated as domestic garbage without special institutions for recycling.
Weng Yunxuan, secretary-general of the Degradable Plastics Professional Committee of China Plastics Association, said that according to the composition of lunch boxes, they are mainly divided into two categories: one is non-degradable, mainly using PP and PS as the main raw materials, and there are also PP composite calcium carbonate or talcum powder and PS foaming; The other is degradable materials, mainly starch-based plastics and biodegradable plastics. No matter what kind of lunch box, the raw materials of lunch box should meet the food safety standard of GB4806.6, the products of lunch box should meet the standard of GB4806.7, and the additives used should meet the standard of GB9685.
"The sources and ingredients of disposable plastic tableware materials are too complicated, which is not conducive to recycling. At the same time, Chinese food is characterized by high temperature, oil and acid, and the cost of recycling and cleaning disposable plastic tableware is too high. Moreover, disposable plastic tableware is thin and light, and its recycling value is too low. In addition, the color and printing of many disposable tableware are also the reasons why it is difficult to recycle. " Chairman Zhi of Changzhou Long Jun Tian Chun Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd told CBN, "The high content of calcium carbonate is easy to cause the migration of heavy metals and harmful substances. Food-grade calcium carbonate, if used in moderation, is no problem. The key point is that many disposable tableware lack effective supervision, which leads to problems in pursuing excessive profit addition. "
"We basically don't pick up plastic bags. Most of them are mixed with domestic garbage, which is too dirty to pick up. Clean transparent plastic lunch boxes are sometimes chosen, and they are too dirty to be used. Mainly some plastic bottles, but they are very cheap. The price we charge is 1 cent, and the price we sell is 1 cent. We don't make money at all, we will collect it when we meet it, and we will not deliberately pick it up. " A worker who bought waste products in a certain district said.
Liu Xuesong, deputy general manager of Beijing Yingchuang Renewable Resources Recycling Co., Ltd. said that at present, China does not have a complete recycling system, and recycling still depends on the army of scavengers. However, the living space of the individual recycling army has been greatly compressed. If the scale of recycling team continues to shrink in the future, a large number of renewable resources will face a situation of no recycling. "The biggest problem at present is that recycling has not formed a network. A large number of recyclables with low added value failed to enter the recycling channel of renewable resources and were re-mixed into municipal solid waste. The front-end diversion of renewable resources is insufficient, which reduces the effectiveness of garbage removal and reduction. "
In addition to the difficulty in effectively opening up recycling channels, the recycling cost of plastics also limits the willingness of enterprises to recycle.
"As long as plastic and domestic garbage are mixed together. The recycling cost is too high, even exceeding the manufacturing of new plastics. No one will do it unless the government subsidizes it. Plastic plasticization also has secondary pollution, as well as waste water, waste materials, waste residue and so on. Need to weigh. " An expert from Beijing Environmental Health Monitoring Station said.
The staff of Huayuan Recycling Materials Recycling Center also clearly told the First Financial Reporter that plastics are basically not accepted, because this business requires many documents, including environmental protection guarantee, which is difficult to handle. In addition, even if someone in the industry collects it, it only collects crushed plastic particles, about 300-400 yuan tons, and then returns to some black workshops in rural areas for processing.
"environmentally friendly companies can accept disposable plastic products, but they are basically free, and everyone has no motivation." The above-mentioned person from Huayuan Recycling Materials Recycling Center said.
Plastic waste landfill and incineration capacity is insufficient.
Some insiders said that in theory, plastics can be melted and reprocessed many times without being polluted. However, in practical use, it is difficult to recycle it many times because of pollution and other problems during use. Therefore, more often, recycling can only produce degraded products, and it will be more difficult to reuse these degraded products.
Recycling hopeless plastics can only be directly burned or buried in the end.
According to industry insiders, from the current treatment methods, it is still unclear how much plastic is burned and buried and how much is released into the natural environment outside the garbage system. Sanitary landfill and incineration are the main ways to treat plastics all over the world. But unfortunately, many landfills cannot be sanitary landfills. The cost of sanitary landfill and sanitary incineration is high.
"Standardized garbage disposal sites, incineration and landfill will not have big problems. When the incineration temperature is higher than 500 degrees, plastics will turn to ashes. On the one hand, it will reduce the amount, on the other hand, it will completely solve the pollutants. However, many landfills have no incineration capacity, and a large number of disposable plastics are mixed with domestic garbage, which is difficult to classify, so we can only do simple incineration to prevent the wind from blowing up the plastics. This kind of different plastic components are simply mixed and burned, which is easy to produce air pollution. If it is landfill, with the increase of garbage output year by year, large-scale garbage landfills in big cities are overloaded, "said an expert from Beijing Environmental Health Monitoring Station.
Branch also analyzed that the problem of plastic waste landfill is mainly a volume problem. Because of its small specific gravity and large volume, plastic waste is usually simply burned when it is buried. In the process of low-temperature incineration, there will be a lot of waste gas emissions, even dioxin emissions.
Biodegradable plastics stand out.
"To solve the problem of environmental protection after the application of disposable plastic products, it is indeed necessary to expand the application of biodegradable plastics." The horse said:
In order to find out the present situation of disposable plastics in China, on May 6th, the key consulting project of China Academy of Engineering, "Disposal of Disposable Plastic Products Waste and Development Status of Biodegradable Plastics in China", was launched in Nanjing, aiming at providing strategic suggestions for macro-decision on clean utilization of disposable plastic products waste in China, predicting the future development trend of biodegradable plastics, proposing technical roadmap and countermeasures for the development of biodegradable plastics industry, and providing reference and suggestions for China's biodegradable plastics technology and industry.
"If the courier bags and tapes are made of biodegradable plastics, it can be said that it is one of the solutions. It can solve the problem that the recycling value of disposable plastics is not high and it is not worth recycling. " The horse said:
The rookie network with the largest business volume in the express delivery industry, together with 32 logistics partners around the world, launched the "Green Campaign Plan", which includes specific actions such as green package, green distribution, green recycling and green intelligence, and is committed to creating multi-dimensional green logistics and reducing environmental pollution. But what bothers them is still the cost.
However, the relevant person in charge of the rookie network also analyzed that the production cost of using fully biodegradable bags is high. Take the most commonly used biodegradable bag of 28*42cm as an example. If it is a million-level purchase, the purchase cost per package will increase by at least 0.5 yuan; Considering the volume of 8.3 billion plastic bags in the express delivery industry in 20 15, the cost increased by more than 4 billion yuan last year alone, and it is estimated that it will need 20 billion yuan by 2020.
In addition, even if biodegradable plastic bags are used, the environmental protection standards of products should be improved. According to the industry standard of biodegradable plastic packaging products (HJ/T209-2005) issued in June 2005, the biodegradation rate of plastic bags in 180 days is considered to be qualified, which is still far from the international standards of the European Union and the United States.
"The formulation of the national standard for biodegradable courier bags is currently underway and will be launched as soon as possible." An expert involved in standard setting said.
The deposit recovery model opens up new recovery channels
Considering the characteristics of plastic products used in Internet consumption, plastic recycling channels also need innovation.
"As a typical low value-added garbage, the standard packaging of beverages accounts for 30%-40% of the total municipal solid waste, and its recycling process has the characteristics of easy identification of categories, high frequency of production and high cost of socialized collection. We can use' internet plus', a new recycling platform, to build a deposit recycling system for standard packaging categories of beverages. First, it can achieve efficient and safe recycling of low value-added garbage of a single category and open a breakthrough in classified recycling of domestic garbage. " Liu Xuesong said.
The essence of "beverage standard packaging deposit system" is to realize the socialized collection and recycling of beverage bottles by collecting the deposit from them, so as to promote the garbage classification, control the recycling process and eliminate the secondary pollution. Specifically, when consumers buy drinks, they need to pay a certain amount of deposit to the channel provider, and the channel provider needs to pay the deposit corresponding to the beverage bottle to the beverage production enterprise when buying drinks. When a consumer drinks a beverage bottle and sends it to a self-service beverage bottle recycling machine or a manual recycling point, the deposit clearing center will deduct the beverage bottle deposit from the associated account of the beverage production enterprise and return it to the consumer.
"This system will replace the functions of informal recycling channels such as" individual guerrillas "and" small crushing workshops "in the industrial chain of standard packaging materials for beverage recycling, ensure that the recycling flow of renewable resources is controllable and further improve the standardization level of urban management; The implementation of the beverage packaging deposit system will also find a better and executable landing plan for the express packaging recycling that is generally worried at present. " Liu Xuesong said.
In China, there have been successful cases in the implementation of the deposit system. In 2000, Shanghai promulgated and implemented the Interim Measures for the Management of Disposable Plastic Lunch Boxes, which successfully implemented the deposit system in the process of recycling disposable plastic lunch boxes and achieved good social effects.
Internationally, the deposit system is also one of the most effective means for the government to implement compulsory garbage sorting. At present, 40 countries and regions in the world have implemented the deposit system, covering beverage bottles, lead-acid batteries and automobiles. Taking beverage bottles as an example, Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Croatia, Lithuania and other countries, as well as parts of the United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain and Scotland have implemented the deposit system for standard packaging of beverages.
"The introduction of the deposit refund system can promote the effective implementation of waste sorting. For the classified recovery of low value-added recyclables, some methods and measures have been formulated in some urban areas in China, such as establishing funds to grant subsidies and punishing illegal objects. However, in the specific implementation, it is necessary to continue to explore and solve the problems of pre-subsidy in the industrial chain, uncertain punishment targets, high cost of statistical supervision of recyclables, and large investment, in order to implement the policy in practice. " Liu Xuesong said.