China Environmental Law

The Ministry of Environmental Protection on July 1, 2008 issued a circular (Chinese only) designed to strengthen the implementation of clean production audits.  These audits are addressed in Article 28 of the Clean Production Law (effective January 1, 2003)(copy in right sidebar under “Laws & Regulations”). Two categories of “enterprises” are required to conduct clean production audits:

• Those that exceed “the national or local discharging standards or exceed the total volume control targets for pollutants set by the relevant local people’s governments,” and
• Those “using toxic and hazardous materials in production or discharging toxic and hazardous substances.”

All other enterprises must “monitor resource consumption and generation of wastes during the course of production and provision of services, and conduct cleaner production audits with respect to production and service procedures according to need.”

There are regulations that provide more detail as to how to conduct a clean production audit, but basically the types of things to be generally considered are set forth in Articles 18 through 20 the Clean Production Law: an audit should undertake and analysis and assess the of use of raw materials, resource consumption, comprehensive utilization of resources, as well as generation of pollutants and their treatment with an eye toward adopting cleaner production technologies, processes and equipment, which maximize the resource utilization rate and generate the fewest pollutants. Enterprises should

• adopt toxin-free, non-hazardous or low-toxin and low-harm raw materials to replace toxic and hazardous raw materials; and
• provide for the comprehensive use or recycling of materials such as waste products, waste water and heat generated from production procedures.

Subsequent provision deal with reducing excess packaging and set forth some specific requirements for certain industrial sectors.

The new circular hopes, in particular, to spur efforts to achieve national total quantity reduction goals for discharges of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and sulfur dioxide (SO2).  It is focused primarily on audit compliance by “key enterprises,” especially those in the electric power, iron and steel, dye stuffs, electroplating, papermaking, building materials, petrochemical, chemical, drug manufacture, food, brewery, printing, and other “heavy polluting” industries or located in the “three river three lakes” areas. But it also functions as a general reminder to local environment protection bureaus to enforce the requirement for clean production audits among all covered enterprises.

Included as Appendix 1 is a list of substances (the second batch) which qualify as “toxic and hazardous materials” whose in production or generation as waste triggers the need for a clean production audit.

The circular also reiterates and adds some details to the need for “verification” of clean production audit results by local environmental authorities, and includes as Appendix 2 a clean production verification appraisal and approval implementation guide.

Article 17 of the Clean Production Law provides that

In accordance with their needs of promoting cleaner production, [local] governments may publish a list of the names of heavily-polluting enterprises in local primary media based on the pollution discharge conditions of such enterprises, where the pollutants discharged exceed the standards or the total volume of pollutants exceeds regulatory limits, in order to provide the public with a basis for policing enterprise implementation of cleaner production.

Given th goals of this circular, expect greater attention to this publication requirement.