China Environmental Law

The State Council on Wednesday approved a draft regulation on the management of electronic wastes.  As usual, the Xinhua story  provides little context or history so it is hard to confirm whether this regulation is, in fact, a new draft version of a regulation initially issued in draft form (for public comment) in 2004 (often referred to as China’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulation).  The description of the regulation and the reference in the story to the fact that “draft was approved following years of debate over the issue in China” would indicate that it is.

Here’s how the article describes the key points of the draft regulation:

The country will set up a mechanism to encourage recycling and centralized treatment of electronic waste. This will be supported by a special fund, according to the proposed law.

It also stipulated the respective responsibilities of manufacturers, retailers, repair and customer service providers and recycling companies in regards to the collection and treatment of electronic waste. These included used TV sets, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and computers, among others.

Since the 2004 China WEEE draft, SEPA (now MEP) has occupied some of the electronic waste space with its own set of regulations.  It will be interesting to see how this State Council draft meshes with those. 

Attempts to find a copy of the regulation on line (even in Chinese) have so far proved fruitless.  One is on its way in a hard copy form, and if worse comes to worse, I’ll scan it in and post it for you.  As soon as I’ve had a chance to read the regulation you can be sure I’ll write  a follow-up.