China Environmental Law

There has undoubtedly been a reduction in plastic bag use across China in the first month of the imposition of the “white pollution” reduction measures.  You see more and more use of alternative shopping bags, be they cloth bags, woven baskets, or reused heavy plastic bags.

The plastic bag is still very much with us, however.  I still don’t get the sense that kicking the plastic habit has become fashionable among the younger generation.  It is the older generation which seems to be the early adapters on this one, and that could explain why there is very little cool factor surrounding this initiative; who wants to look like Granny Zhao (bless her heart and more on her anon)?  Yesterday, the college-age kid ahead of me in line (actually he was behind me in line, but he managed to check out before me-if you’re not familiar with this phenomenon, I’m sorry but I don’t have time to explain it today) bought a plastic bag to carry out two small bottles of some hideous looking substance called “Tense Up.” The guy already looked pretty on edge to me, I can only imagine what he’s like after the “Tense Up” kicks in, but I digress.

Xinhua carried a story reporting on the one-month anniversary of the plastic bag ban/purchase regulations. Consistent with my personal observations, the initiative has met with some success, and has been outwitted in other areas.

With her grandson in tow, granny Zhao Hanlian set out to a nearby farm produce fair. Then she remembered that she had forgotten something and hurried back gasping to her fourth-storey home — not her glasses nor money, but a cloth bag.

Over the past month, the 65-year-old housewife in central China’s Henan Province has made sure that she carries a cloth bag whenever she goes shopping.

“Here are your yams,” said a peddler nimbly loading six of them into granny Zhao’s cloth bag in the downtown market at Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan. For the past month, peddlers on the market have not supplied free plastic bags because of a new decree in China.

Leaving the farm produce fair, granny Zhao turned off to a nearby chemist’s for some cough medicine for her grandson. A salesgirl put the medicines in a paper bag — no free plastic bag either.

“It doesn’t matter how much a plastic shopping bag costs. What matters is our sense of environmental protection,” Zhao said.

From the unspoiled simplicity of rural Henan Province, let’s travel to the wicked, scheming heart of China’s capital city:

thrifty housewives have found they can get free plastic bags in the supermarket on the meat, seafood and cake counters. These plastic bags, largely rolled in bundles, may be torn apart by customers themselves (and are called hand-torn plastic bags), when they come to buy these cooked, uncooked food or cakes.

On June 29, Hu Yue, a nurse, went to the Carrefour outlet at Chongwenmen, downtown Beijing, and found that hand-torn plastic bags at the fruit and vegetable counter were very popular. Many consumers would tear one or two more bags than they needed, fold and hide them in shopping trolleys, “to be used as rubbish containers at home”, as many confessed.

Consequently,

“The charged plastic bags [at the check-out counter] are less in demand, but hand-torn bags are used at least 30 percent more than last month,” said Li.

I suspect that the regulations apparent exception for “plastic packaging” for the hygiene and safety of products “such as food and cooked food” is causing some confusion among consumers and allowing some merchants to skirt the law. 

Yunnan Province will disperse with all ambiguity come January 1, 2009:

Southwest China’s Yunnan Province will set a model for the country in truly protecting the environment in this respect, as it is planning stricter rules on the use of plastic bags.

The provincial government has announced a definite ban on the production, sales and use of all plastic bags across the province, no matter of they are thicker or thinner than the 0.025 mm threshold, from January 1 next year.

It’s good to see China’s provinces experimenting with stricter regulations than those mandated by the national government.  I hope this experiment succeeds.