China to Tap Brakes on Waste Imports

(Beijing) — China has said it will prohibit the importation of numerous types of waste products as it seeks to meet its environmental-protection obligations as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), nearly 16 years after it joined the international trade body.

In a filing with the WTO on Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said that by the end of 2017, the country will no longer accept shipments of 24 types of solid waste, including household plastic waste, unsorted waste paper, and textiles.

“We found that recycled solid waste is often mixed with large amounts of dirty and hazardous waste, and this has led to serious environmental pollution in China,” the WTO filing noted.

“To protect China’s environment and public health, we urgently need to adjust the list of imported solid wastes, and forbid the import of those deemed highly polluting.”

The ministry did not clarify the amount of pollution from the processing of raw materials as opposed to that from recycling.

WTO member countries are barred from importing highly contaminated foreign garbage, but China was exempted from such rules at the time of its entry in December 2001, according to Qu Ruijing of the China Association of Circular Economy in Beijing, a government-backed NGO that advocates recycling.

Beijing took the step after greater realization that the importation of foreign waste is at odds with its efforts to tackle environmental pollution, Qu said.

The country might still have to import certain types of waste needed to produce raw materials through recycling, he said.

China is a major importer of waste used as raw materials and it imported 46.98 million tons of recycled solid waste in 2015, down 5.3% from a year earlier, statistics from the Ministry of Environmental Protection show.

Last year it imported 7.3 million tons of waste plastics alone, worth $3.7 billion, which accounted for 56% of global imports, according to the International Trade Centre, a joint United Nations-WTO institution.

Amid rising pressure to address worsening air, water and soil pollution and the rampant smuggling of garbage into China, a Communist Party group overseeing the country’s reform issued a document in April seeking to tighten control of solid-waste imports in an effort to keep highly contaminated categories out.

The MEP launched a campaign at the beginning of the month to crack down on solid-waste importers who disregard environmental-protection rules.

In a circular released Monday, it said it has inspected 1,162 companies specializing in recycling imported waste and that nearly two-thirds were found to have irregularities, including flouting required environmental impact studies and inadequate storage of hazardous waste.

Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com)