PN China Blog - English: Recycling Archives

Among the criticism, distrust and bans of plastic

This summer accompanying the growing scares over Chinese products is the global public's heating discussion on plastics bags, bottles, recycling and BPA.

I can feel the strong anti-plastic movement as a consumer. In a popular online shopping discussion forum I go to, many are asking where to buy glass food containers, as they toss out plastic ones. Some told me they learned from media reports even the ones labeled microwave-safe and dishwasher-safe don't really live up to the claims.

Then I read Alan Weisman's comments on that topic, in an interview about his new book, The World Without Us.
He said:

We did pretty well without plastics until World War II. Now, I realize that a lot of things are great with plastics, and I don't think we necessarily have to get rid of them all.
But think about what your grandmother did when she went to the market. Did she take a plastic bag for a tomato, a plastic bag for a cucumber? No, she took one bag to the market, put all of her groceries in it, brought it home, and reused it the next time she went.
I seriously want it to be made a crime to give away free bags in supermarkets -- paper bags too. That would solve an enormous problem.

I'd like to second his point about paper bags. General-interest media have given me the impression in the recent coverage of plastic bag bans that replacing plastic bags with paper bags is a good solution. But that cant be true. How many more trees will vanish from the face of the earth to make up for the current usage of plastic grocery bags? Some argue paper bags are more likely to be reused because of its physical attributes. But I think, a consumer in the habit of tossing free grocery bags won't change his routine just because the material is different.

Instead, it's the mentality of "everything is disposable."

Several years ago, a business professor with special interest in Asia asked me why he saw everybody in China holding a plastic or paper shopping bags even with store or brand logo. He was curious whether people really shopped that much and that often. I told him they were using those shopping bags as their daily bags, sort of an alternative to fancy satchel purses or messenger bags.

Somehow, I see less and less of that in China every time I go over. Well, as the economy booms, purchasing power expands and western lifestyle gains popularity, people dispose more and reuse less.

It's that I only want it fresh and new mentality. And shamefully, I've started to become obsessed with it too. I recently moved and was seriously thinking about throwing away most housewares items and buy a completely new set. They still functioned perfectly, but I just craved a new look for my home, thanks to all the home makeover shows on TV.

The good thing is I didn't let myself do that.

But, it was not easy to resist that toss-old-buy-new temptation.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on September 7, 2007 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Anti-plastic bag wrapped in plastic

My friend Iris Hu in New York spent a sleepless summer night in the parking lot of a Whole Foods store in a scramble for a $15 cotton grocery bag.

The bags, introduced by London designer Anya Hindmarch, read Im not a plastic bag andare intended to be used and reused for groceries, in place of plastic.

The New York Times reported:

A stampede of would-be purchasers in Taiwan in June sent 30 people to the hospital and required the riot police. A similar outpouring in Hong Kong caused no injuries, but the police closed down the shopping mall.

And according to Chinese newspaper Beijing Youth, an offering in Beijing was canceled for concern with riots.

The irony is the bag has become more of a fashion than a campaign for a cleaner environment. Bids for the bags on Chinese websites have topped $200. And I wouldnt be surprised to see fashion snobs with this canvas bag on the shoulder still holding a plastic bag for Chinese or Thai takeout, or for other day-to-day shopping chores.

Im not joking. Just check out the photos below, courtesy of my friend Iris: due to the rain in New York are, her Im Not a Plastics Bag came wrapped in a Whole Foods plastic bag in order to stay dry!

Photos courtesy of Iris Hu.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on August 7, 2007 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What goes around comes back around

Globalization draws circles. Here is an ironic one: cheap jewelry with high levels of toxic lead from China is being recalled in the United States, but the source of the raw material is electronic waste dumped by Western countries to China.

The recalled jewelry includes necklace and earring sets with plastic "birthstones" sold by Sears Holdings Corp.'s Kmart stores.

The Wall Street Journal's July 12 story Lead toxins take a global round trip said:

For lead, the trip to China from the U.S. typically goes something like this: U.S. consumers and businesses send their old electronics to recycling firms -- often by way of innocuous recycling drives. Some of those firms then sell the electronics to dealers in the U.S., who sell them to dealers in China. Chinese companies buy the e-waste and strip lead and other re-sellable materials from it -- often discarding harmful materials along the way, adding to local pollution. Those firms then sell the recovered lead to alloy makers like Ms. Liu, who provide it to Chinese manufacturers. The lead makes its way -- sometimes at toxic levels -- into trinkets sold to consumers in the U.S.

It also made a point that the stingy Western buyers need to take the blame, at least partially:

In Yiwu [animportant hub for low-priced Chinese exports], jewelry sellers make no secret of using toxic lead alloy in their products. They insist buyers know what they're getting and say using lead is the only way to offer the low prices that foreign purchasers are willing to pay.
......
Some manufacturers say they are moving away from lead alloy at the request of customers, especially those from the U.S. and Western Europe. Nearly all say that, if a buyer wants them to, factories can lower the lead content of their products. "People can choose. We give them whatever they want," says Ni Lanzhen, a wholesaler of jewelry and trinkets, including a tiny ring topped with a lead flower. "But most of the market is lead alloy."

Admit it or not, the same thing happens in the global flow of plastics. American brokers ship large amount of plastic scrap to China, where underemployed villagers manually sort, clean and reprocess into resin. These recycled materials go into apparel, consumer products and electronics that are shipped back to the States.

How do you like wearing a fleece thats made, in essence, from coke bottles you throw into the trash can?

The Chinese dont practice magic solutions that really turn waste into treasure, as the popular Chinese saying in the recycling industry goes. Besides health hazards to the workers, pollution and deterioration of living environment, consumers in developed nations also fall victim. Isn't it a lose-lose situation?

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on August 7, 2007 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christmas gift: hats made of grocery bags?

Apparently, 84-year-old May Johnson in Northeast Portland has found a good use for the plastic shopping bags cluttering in her house, according to a news story in The Oregonian.

She makes hats and purses with chain store bags and gives them to friends.

One of her fellow members at the plastic-as-art group, Leave No Plastic Behind, turns plastic strapping from newspaper bundles and other materials into purses and baskets.

Johnson also thinks about making buttons out of plastic shaker lids on spice bottles.

These are all great, as an art and a refreshing message to the public about the use of resources.

It looks to me like it just stops there, unfortunately. How are you going to commercialize these lovely ideas? If commercialization can't be done, then it's not gonna solve or mitigate the shopping bag issue.

First, let's take a look at how these special hats and purses are produced:

Johnson cuts the plastic bags into strips and braids four at a time into a flat rope that she then sews together. She fashions flowers from remaining plastic for the hats and either braids a button-shaped clasp for her purses or employs a plastic bottle cap. Particular skill comes in lining up the colors into a crosshatch or a herringbone pattern.

I don't know about you, but I can't help but wonder if the plastic bags are washed, or better,sterilized before their transformation. Is it safe to actually wear these hats? What about the printing ink on the bags? How many bags does it take to make a hat? How durable can they be?

Even assuming the product is good and safe, the required manual labor dampens the chance of large-scale production.

Well, that's under the assumption that the production takes place in the States. It's different in China. Those of you who have been to China, do you recall seeing products fabricated from plastic tubes in the mid-90s? They came in all kinds of designs, mostly animal shapes such as pandas, kittens and lobsters. I bought a handful of them for a buck. Then, it seemed like all of sudden, they were gone. Newspapers said workshops were busted for making the handicrafts with used perfusion tubes! I know my fear for used plastic is probably ungrounded in the States, where bio-hazard waste is strictly controlled.

Still, unless the safety parameters are tested and made clear to the public, I will stay away from products made of used plastic.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on February 20, 2008 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Knockoff, in eco's name?

I was skimming the official Web site of the state-owned People's Daily, China's largest daily newspaper when something caught my eye. It was a sentence in plain English, which really stood out in the all Chinese-language Web site. On a photo of a cloth bag, were the words "I'm not a plastic bag."

Back when I wrote my first blog item about the famous "I'm not a plastic bag" designed by Anya Hindmarch last August, I checked the Internet and found plenty of pictures of apparent knockoffs. But they were underground, and they knew they were illegal.

This one is different. The picture appears right under the authorities' noses, and in a well-respected newspaper, too! The one-paragraph story says: Many people were buying cotton bags that have the print of "I'm not a plastics bag" in front of a department store. The seller told the reporter that the production cost of one such bag is 10 yuan. However, in order to make consumers familiar with eco-friendly bags, it only sells for 2 yuan.

Obviously, the quality of the bag is not comparable to the real "I'm not a plastic bag." The font and layout have been slightly changed, too. Since I'm not an expert on intellectual property laws, I'm not sure if I can call it a knockoff or not.

However, if you want to educate Chinese consumers about the plastic reuse/recycle issue, why use the English slogan that many don't even know the meaning?

Here's my view: Chinese consumers are being immersed by the strongest-ever "green washing." Businesses are so excited with the best-ever opportunities of marketing anything that's not apparent plastic. Anyone really care about sustainability? Energy and resources conservation? Green house gas emission? Just ask a random person on the street what the popular nonwoven "eco-friendly" shopping bags are made of, and I bet nine out 10 wouldn't know that the material still is plastic.

Think about it, use cloth bags to replace plastic shopping bags might be a righteous and trendy thing, but not required by the laws. On the other hand, breaking the intellectual property laws is indeed illegal. When marketing schemes override the compliance with laws, whose agenda is driving the booming Chinese economy?

Snapshot of my screen: just so readers can see what the bags look like

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on March 13, 2008 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

China's EPA to expand

In the upcoming restructuring of China's central government, the State Environmental Protection Administration will become one of the very few national agencies that actually expand. SEPA will upgrade to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Jing Hua Times reported.

Wang Yuqing, former deputy chief of SEPA, said March 9 that the agency will also strengthen its personnel, functions and national network.

China is taking action to consolidate its bureaucracy by streamlining regulators. Basically, agencies, administrations, bureaus will be combined into a smaller number of more powerful ministries.

If anything, the increasingly prominent status of SEPA reflects the growing awareness of environmental protection among Chinese citizens and lawmakers.

But China's SEPA is still very small compared to its U.S. counterpart. Compared to SEPA's staff of 300 (excluding affiliated institutions), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employs about 18,000 with an annual budget of about $7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on March 11, 2008 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fire update: owner detained

A main character behind the February 27 fire that killed 15 workers at LongFei Recycling Co. Ltd. in Shenzhen was detained by Chinese police. LongFei owner Chen Jinlong, 43, was arrested in his hometown of Shanwei, Guangdong province. Shenzhen police also has detained, among others, the company's business manager and accountant Chen Yongquan, according to a press release by the Shenzhen government.

Local public security and the fire department have told the press that the fire was caused by electrical wire short-circuits during Longfei's around-the-clock production. While the wires melted, sparks dropped to the piles of plastic waste in the operating room, reported local newspaper Yang Cheng Wan Bao.

Sadly, the three workers on shift, two night guards and a company driver who was playing Mahjong with two friends all escaped without alerting the 15 coworkers who were sound asleep. One of the workers said that after he left, he remembered about the 15 people in the loft and returned to the operating room and tried to control the fire with a fire extinguisher, but the raging fire scared him out right away.

The Shenzhen government said it, along with LongFei, has settled the compensation issues for the victims' families. The 15 dead included seven from Chongqing and eight from Lufeng, Guangdong province. The three wounded are all from Lufeng.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on March 11, 2008 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

China's 1st bottle reclaim machine

China's first beverage bottle collecting machine has proven a hit on Shanghai's popular pedestrian shopping street Nanjing Road. According to the English language Shanghai Daily ( with photo), the machine accepts plastic and aluminum beverage containers with readable bar codes and releases a 0.10 yuan coin for each accepted bottle.

The machine, designed by a Beijing-based company, swallowed more than 1,700 bottles during the May 1-3 holiday. The street management office, according to Shanghai Daily, said the goal is to help reduce the number of waste collectors on the street and raise people's awareness of environmental protection.

Check out this photo: right by the brand new reclaim machine, a trash collector is reaching into a conventional trash bin for bottles.

Are these trash collectors feeling threatened? I bet so, especially as the government is hinting plans to place more automatic reclaim machines in Shanghai.

But until such machines stand on every street corner, waste collectors should still have some job security. At a street corner in Shanghai, I took this picture of two women warmly chatting on the sidewalk. The one in the vest is a government-employed street cleaning staffer, and the other, in a leather jacket, is a self-employed trash collector--collecting everything from aluminum to paper to plastic bottles. I don't know how they got to know each other. But it wouldn't be a surprise if the cleaning lady sells the bottles she collects to the recycler.

Waste collecting isn't an easy job. There seems to be a lot of competition on the street. Sometimes the collectors follow or beg people for bottles. But most of them are used to that and aren't shy. Their faces look indifferent. After all, it's a legitimate way to make a living. The collectors don't add glamor to the city, but they do no harm. They only help the society recycle.

I remember seeing aluminum pop can reclaim machines in New York City. It looked like some users were professional collectors that lived on the street. But Chinese collectors won't go to the automatic machine for bottle redemption, because they get a higher price from recycling dealers than from the machine --so far, I should add. If one day, the machines pay the same as the dealers, then dealers and other middlemen may lose their jobs too. In that case, China's recycling system may have a transformation ahead and will only become more efficient. But isn't employment and social stability a big concern of the government?

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on May 15, 2008 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Trash bins: 1-2-4-0

Trash bins in China come in pairs now. One is for recyclables and the other for stuff that can't be recycled. That's a good step forward, compared to what it used to be -- one trash bin for all.

Beijing airport. Photo by Nina Ying Sun

But does the public know what is recyclable and what isn't? Not really. In Shanghai, I saw people throw things in without looking at what is what, and I also watched bottle collectors dig out PET bottles from both bins.

I thought I knew more about recycling and plastic than the average person. But when I had a plastic bag to dump, I couldn't decide which bin.

The Japanese system, in comparison, is much more user-friendly.

A park in suburban Tokyo. Photo by Chen Lin

In the photo, from left to right, the first three bins with pink signs are for trash that can be incinerated; the next three in the middle with blue signs are for PET bottles; the next two ones with orange signs are for metal cans; and the one on the very right is for all other types of trash.

But don't always expect a fleet of nine trash bins in Japan. This sign in downtown Tokyo actually asks people to take their trash home. And there were no trash bins on that street.

Tokyo downtown. Photo by Chen Lin

What's more impressive than the system itself is how well people abide by the rules and keep the world's second most densely populated country clean and efficient.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on May 13, 2008 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

North Korea wants plastic waste

Perhaps inspired by its neighbor China's success in the recycling business, North Korea is seeking supplies of plastic and electronics waste that "can be processed in the port but which other countries and territories are restricted from dealing in," the U.K.'s The Telegraph quoted a North Korea-based Chinese-language Web site as saying.

So I asked myself, what advantage does North Korea have in plastic recycling? The first benefit that came to mind was the offset of the country's extremely low labor cost against the labor-intensive sorting involved in recycling. In addition, the country has expressed its willingness to take in waste that other countries refuse to accept.

The country's disadvantages include the lack of technology, equipment and experience, but that could be solved through a good foreign partner. Logistics is another issue. North Korea doesn't have much processing capacity, and if the regrinds are destined to other countries, the freight cost will dent the margin, versus China's model of recycling waste and consuming the regrind materials locally. But if North Korea intends to use the reprocessed resins to make goods for its domestic market, that will make sense. That way the country could effectively compete with plastic products imported from countries like China.

I suppose that China, Russia and South Korea, which all border North Korea, will watch with caution the environmental impact of waste processing in North Korea.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on July 11, 2008 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tetra Pak's gift for Beijing

This is probably going to be the most well-known wood-plastic composite structure in China: an artistically-designed 100-meter-long outdoor bench in the Olympics Metro Park in Beijing. Click here to view photos.

Tetra Pak, the patron, will gain name recognition by masses of visitors to the park, whose numbers are projected to be between 140,000 and 270,000 each day, during the Beijing Olympic Games.

More than 129,000 used Tetra Pak containers went into the composite materials that formed the sitting panels of the bench, People's Daily said.

In 2007, 13,000 metric tons of Tetra Pak packaging was recycled in China, according to the Swiss company.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on July 25, 2008 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No bottles left behind

The Beijing Olympics, just two weeks away, is counting on Coca-Cola and a local company to "greenly" handle all of the plastic beverage bottles left in its sports venues.

Coca-Cola (China) said in a release that the company will join forces with Beijing Incom Resources Recovery Co. to recycle the PET bottles consumed during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

Incom claims to be the world's largest plastics recycling facility. It started operation last August and is capable of processing 60,000 metric tons of waste annually.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on July 25, 2008 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

China's challenge to manage waste scavengers

Like in many other developing countries, waste scavengers play an essential part in China's recycling industry. In fact, they are called "Kings of waste" in China. However, we all know they don't look as glamorous as their nickname implies. In fact, in the plastics boomtown of Ningbo in China's Zhejiang province, scavengers may be asked to live only in designated areas.

The city is considering a bill aimed to better mange the recycling industry, Modern Jin News reported. One clause suggests local jurisdictions make migrant waste scavengers "live in the same areas when applicable."

The concern is that these migrant scrap collectors set up collection points without permission, which can harm the city's image, as well as causing traffic and community safety problems. And, the truth is, there are so many of them! Ningbo alone has 32,000 people involved in the recycling sector. Ningbo's neighboring city Yuyao is believed to be China's largest distribution center of plastic resin, both virgin and regrind.

I don't think the city government can just order people to live in certain areas. But local communities may voluntarily intervene by limiting real estate rentals. Some already are doing it.

As sketchy as the bill is, it reveals many thought-provoking issues: Which government agencies and departments should be responsible of regulating the recycling industry? What are the practical ways of controlling migrant waste collectors? How can municipalities prevent pollution from recycled materials?

No one has the answers yet. Some cities tried to encourage waste scavengers to pass tests and get certificates, but that did not work out.

Cixi, another city in the industrial province Zhejiang, has recently passed a plan to set up a recycling base with sufficient infrastructure, such as sewage treatment plants. The complex will be 41 acres.

A good start, I say, both the attention and the actions.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on September 3, 2008 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Recycling at the Olympics

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was a spectacle, but it also generated 107.9 metric tons of waste, the Beijing government said. Thanks to more than 3,000 workers and 300 vehicles involved in the collection and initial processing, more than 80 percent of the waste was recycled.

A total of 1,122 recyclable waste bins were placed in the Olympic Green in Beijing, in addition to 1,422 non-recyclable waste bins. Workers used electric cars to transfer waste from bins to the four "Waste Compressing Points" around the Green. The points were equipped with compressing containers that measure 17 cubic meters and each fit nearly 10,000 bottles.

The next stop was the Xiaowuji Waste Management Station, where China's only NIR automatic sorting line processed the waste. Baled bottles were then delivered to recycling plants.

Manual sorting was used to process waste collected from 11 stadiums located in the Haidian, Fengtai and Shijing Shan districts. It is reported that the audience of the U.S.-China men's basketball game left 26,614 plastic bottles and 223 aluminum cans.

Previous reports suggested that Coca-Cola and Beijing Incom Resources Recovery Co. were going to handle the recycling part of all PET bottles collected from Olympics stadiums.

[Sources: China Environment News, Fazhi Evening, Beijing Evening, Coca-Cola]

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on August 29, 2008 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

China's 1st NIR sorting line

If you're wondering how the Olympics have changed China in a positive way, well, here is an example. Beijing is now running the nation's first near-infrared photo-detecting line to sort trash collected from the Olympic venues. After the games, this line will be used to process residential waste in the municipality.

As the Beijing Youth Daily described, the line sorts plastic bottles, plastic bags, PVC pipes, steel and paper perfectly, and it automatically bales every category of material.

The investor, Beijing Public Sanitation Group, spent 13 million yuan on the fully automatic line with daily processing capacity of 150 metric tons. "That's about how much 80 workers can process," the company said.

But, bottom line, what does this mean? I started doing some math: assuming the line will run 24-7, and each worker costs the company 100 yuan per 8-hour working day, the line will save 8.7 million yuan on labor cost a year. Even taking into account energy and maintenance costs, the investment should be easily paid off in two years.

Yes, China's labor is still much cheaper than the developed world. But wages are going up, and plastic recycling plants of visions are already applying more technologies than ever to improve efficiency. But I'm curious. How much of a cost advantage will an automated Chinese recycling factory have over its American counterpart? In other words, how will the trend of automation in the Chinese recycling industry revise the global flow of plastic scrap and impact global resin pricing?

What do you think?

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on August 14, 2008 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is it with plastic bottles?

It was almost predictable that the trend of using recycled plastics in electronics like laptops was going to spread wider. Now, Motorola Inc. has unveiled the world's first mobile phone made of recycled plastic bottles -- the carbon neutral Moto W233 Renew.

I like the idea of using recycled plastics -- as our industry has been doing all along -- but I'm not sure why marketing executives are so obsessed with plastic bottles. I guess the concept of "recycled plastic bottles" sells better to consumers than other types of recycled plastics? In other words, recycled plastic bottles are "sexier" than recycled plastic bags, film, pipes, auto parts, etc.?

It reminds me of a public relations campaign during the Beijing Olympics, which touted "T-shirts made from plastic bottles." Come on. How long has recycled polyester been used in apparel already? What's so sensational about it?

Speaking of plastic bottles, another important piece of news is that Coca-Cola will start the world's largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, next Wednesday, the Spartanburg Herald Journal reported. It's a wonderful thing to produce food-grade PET from used bottles and make new bottles with the material. Absolutely the best use of discarded bottles. I very much look forward to the January 15 satellite media tour of the facility.

Finally, is it more eco-friendly to stick to your old cell phone or to replace it with the eco-friendly W233, which doesn't even offer much functional features that your old phone doesn't have?

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on January 7, 2009 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Plastic bag and government priorities

Have you noticed that the global green wave of anti-plastic-shopping-bags rhetoric and legislation is waning?

For instance, Bulgaria is postponing plans to levy a tax on plastic shopping bags, based on fears that the tax would burden businesses too much during the global financial crisis [see full report from Reuters].

China, the first and only country with a nationwide ban on ultra-thin bags and a nationwide mandate for retailers to charge consumers for shopping bags, is also showing signs of more lax enforcement. The central government appears to be concentrating on other priorities -- like measures to sustain economic growth, such as the adjustment of tariffs on imports and tax rebates on exports.

Here in North America, progress is still being made -- New York state recently adopted a law that mandates recycling of plastic bags at large stores. But the recession and gloomy outlook is holding up some localities from embarking on the bag tax. For instance, Santa Clara county in California (source: press release) decided earlier this month to postpone its vote on a new tax of 25 cents for every shopping bag. The reasoning seems to be that raising tax during a severe economic downturn discourages businesses and the public.

At this moment, the U.K is still going ahead with its bag reduction efforts. Seven large supermarkets in the nation have pledged to the government that they will halve the use of plastic shopping bags by spring 2009, through such methods as charging customers for single-use plastic bags or giving them extra loyalty points for bringing their own. But bag taxes will be reconsidered if retailers fail to fulfill their ambitious pledge.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on December 18, 2008 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Toxic plastic scrap kills three recycle workers

A team of workers in China's Zhejiang province collapsed after handling two metric tons of plastic scrap on September 13. At least 21 have since been hospitalized and three of them have died.

According to the initial investigative conclusions just released by the local authorities, the victims were in contact with highly toxic chemical dinitrophenol, which was found on the two tons of plastic scrap. It is believed that a chemical factory in Dongyang city illegally sold used plastic packaging with dinitrophenol residue to a dealer, who then sold the scrap to a recycling shop.

Workers at the recycling shop were unaware of the hazard of the material and had no protection during the unloading.

Four people at the chemical factory have been detained.

This particular tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. China's plastics recycling industry is poorly regulated, with scandals such as biohazard plastic waste being melted and reprocessed into consumer goods. Domestic channels, rather than imports, are oftentimes the source of hazardous scrap materials.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on September 16, 2009 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tianjin builds appliances recycling center

As Chinese consumers take advantage of the government's trade-in subsidies to replace old home appliances, the need for proper, large-scale recycling is on the rise. In response, leading appliances maker TCL Corp. broke ground for a large-scale appliance recycling facility in Tianjin.

The facility, jointly owned by TCL Huizhou Environmental Protection Co., Tianjin Borg Metal Products Co. Ltd., and Tianjin Ziya Environmental Protection Industry Park Co. Ltd., will have the annual capacity to break down 100,000 tons of home appliances, once the first phase construction is completed.

Tianjin Borg has its own plastics recycling business unit.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on October 6, 2009 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sichuan recycling plastic temporary homes

625,000 is the number of plastics makeshift housing units that were built in Sichuan province after the magnitude 8.0 earthquake in 2008. As reconstruction progresses, these plastic structures have fulfilled their duties and are being taken down.

It costs 260 yuan (US$38.1) to dissemble a 20-square-meter (215.3-square-foot) unit and another 400 yuan (US$58.6) to reassemble it elsewhere, plus transport expenses, local authorities were quoted as saying in a report by the Chengdu Business Newspaper. It's also costly to warehouse and manage the unneeded ones. Therefore, it makes good sense to recycle the plastic homes.

Philanthropist Chen Guangbiao, who runs a recycling business -- Huangpu Group - in Jiangsu province, recently announced in Mianyang city that he has invested 30 million yuan (US$4.4 million) and put in place 20 mobile recycling stations, which combined can process 5,000 plastic housing units every day. Chen said the recycling service is free of charge.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on January 4, 2010 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

U.S.-listed Chinese stock with highest return

Among all Chinese stocks listed in the U.S., the one with the highest return on assets ratio in the past 12 months is a plastics recycling company.

According to financial information firm China Analyst, Guanwei Recycling Corp. (NASDAQ:GPRC) features a ROA of 70.36 percent for the last 12 months. Its asset turnover ratio (revenue divided by assets) was 3.26 for the same period.

Guanwei has also shown the highest return on equity among U.S.-listed Chinese stock, according to China Analyst.

Earlier this month, Guanwei announced a sales contract with Sunshine Handels & Consulting GmbH, a German recycling company, for the purchase of 25,000 tons of LDPE waste through June 2011.

The Fuqing-based company reported a sharp increase in net income in its first quarter ended March 31, 2010, which rose 73.4 percent year-over-year to $2,204,604, thanks to growth of high margin business and lower raw material costs.

Reported net sales in the first quarter, however, suffered a 58 percent decline, because the company increase raw material inventory and stopped the resale of other manufacturers' products.

The company noted in its first quarter filing that, in addition to the recovery in selling prices for recycled LDPE, production volume of polyethylene in China increased 19 percent year-over-year to 2.84 million tons in the first quarter.

We wrote about Guanwei last December in this story.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on July 23, 2010 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

China issues new recycling regulations

China's appliances and electronics manufacturers have been ordered to pay a recycling fee on their products, according to new regulations that just took effect on Jan. 1.

In turn, recyclers of appliances and electronics waste will receive a subsidy for the recycling service.

Leading appliances makers like Haier, TCL, and Changhong are building or expanding their recycling operations.

Publicly listed recycler Shenzhen GEM High-tech Co. Ltd. is seeing a boost of its stock price, thanks to positive feedback from the investment community on the new policy.

In addition to the recycling of e-waste and batteries, GEM also runs three wood plastic composite factories in Southeast China.

Analysts said the recycling fee, unspecified by the government, will likely be passed onto consumers, considering the already thin margin of the appliances industry.

The new policy also aims to tighten up imports of appliances and electronics waste and establish an accreditation system for recyclers.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on January 3, 2011 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Myth or fact: waste export to China

China buys plastic scrap from the U.S., recycles it, makes finished goods and ships the finished products right back to the United States. We've all heard this story, right?

"It's not the case," said Patty Moore, president of Moore Recycling Associates Inc. in Sonoma, Calif.

Speaking at a Jan. 27 online seminar hosted by the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, Moore said most of the plastic waste that China imports and recycles ends up in goods sold in China.

The reasons are most quality-related, such as color consistency. Imported scrap is a good source of lower-cost feedstock to serve China's domestic population.

But even China is raising their bar on the quality of scrap, because workers there now demand better working conditions for hand-sorting jobs in the recycling industry, Moore said. During her tours of recycling firms in China, she saw things that are not "up to spec" and that would make OSHA "appalled."

"Low-quality bales will not be wanted in China," she said. "U.S. needs to deal with our own waste...Don't take garbage to have someone else deal with it."

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on February 1, 2011 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MBA Polymers seeks funding in China for new factory

Plastics News reported in March that U.S.-based engineered plastics recycler MBA Polymers had raised $40 million in investment since summer 2010 for continued expansion. Now it looks like the company is also looking for more funding in China for a new plant there.

The seven-year-old Chinese joint venture, Guangzhou GISE-MBA New Plastics Technology Co. Ltd. (GMP), sent its general manager Wang Zhongyuan to a networking event for investment and financing for clean technologies held last month in China, according to a report from the 21st Century Business Herald.

When it was launched in 2005, GMP's Guangzhou plant was MBA Polymer's first commercialized recycling facility. It currently processes 40,000 tons of plastic waste and churns out more 30,000 tons of recycled resin per annum. GMP plans to build a new plant to address strong market demand, Wang was quoted as saying.

When asked about the supply of plastic waste, Wang said most material came from Europe. The company gets paid to take some of the waste, instead of paying for it, he added.

The Guangzhou plant was built with an investment of 124 million yuan (about US$15 million at that time). Wang said the new plant needs a larger investment.

GMP has been in the red ever since the opening, with the exception of 2008, when it managed to make a small profit. But Wang said the situation has changed since last years and he expects to see "really good profit" this year. It mainly supplies to appliances, automotive and office electronics manufacturers.

Potential investors were also interested in the ownership of the recycling technology. The report said key equipment for the new factory will be purchased from MBA Polymers.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on August 5, 2011 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taxes based on electricity bills

Some plastics recyclers in China are facing a new taxation method - taxes will be calculated and collected based on a company's electricity usage instead of reported business revenues.

Tax authorities in Wuning, Zhejiang province, believe this will be a good solution to problems caused by plastics recyclers, especially small shops, failing to report revenues truthfully, according to the Dongyang Daily.

Two different formulas have been developed: one for those that sort and clean the scrap, and one for those that reprocess the waste into pellets.

I wonder how accurate and effective the formulas are, but no details are available. If this new method proves to effective, it will likely to be adapted in other regions.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on September 9, 2011 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Crackdown impacts scrap market

Local governments in China are trying to better regulate the plastics recycling industry, sometimes at the expense of job losses and market disruption. In Wen'an, Heibei province, nearly 100,000 people are reportedly jobless from a recent crackdown.

Aiming to stop the pollution caused by washing and reprocessing plastic scrap and to improve the local environment, according to the Beijing News, Wen'an's government started in July what it called "the most forceful campaign" in July, not only shutting down recycling operations, but also blocking trucks that carry raw plastics waste from entering the town, known as "the capital of plastics scrap" in North China.

Unlike previous crackdowns, the report said, the new town officials are enforcing the ongoing campaign thoroughly and consistently. They dissemble and confiscate processing equipment, and even shut down power supply.

About 125 miles away, scrap collectors and brokers in Beijing saw their inventory rise and prices drop, with the exception of PET bottles, which are recycled in Beijing.

A trade group official told the Beijing News that Beijing generates 1,800 metric tons of plastic waste every day, the majority of it landfilled. The recyclable ones, estimated to be 200 to 300 metric tons, mostly end up in Wen'an.

But since the majority of plastics scrap that flow into Wen'an is imported, the current crackdown has also lead to pileup of imported plastic waste in nearby ports.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on September 14, 2011 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reasons to crack down on recycling

After reading my last post on Wen'an shutting down local plastics recyclers, did you wonder why the Wen'an government is so determined to put a brake on apparently the largest industry and employer in town? Let's take a deeper look.

Water pollution is one of high-profile reasons. Thousands of acres of wheat crops that were irrigated with water from the local river had almost no harvest this summer, newspapers reported. Local residents only drink water from deep wells and bottled water.

The rivers are polluted by untreated waste water from the recycling shops. The local water treatment plant, built in 2009, couldn't handle the work and is often idle.

But some of the local residents don't seem to take the pollution and health issue seriously. Plastic waste is burned in back yards and around the farmland all year round.

For the government, however, the real incentive for the iron-fisted crackdown is economic.

Out of the 4,000 recyclers, 95 percent are not registered, and 98 percent don't pay taxes, officials said. The county received less than 500,000 yuan (US$78,271) in annual tax revenue from the plastics recycling sector, which employed nearly 100,000.

A spokesperson from the China Renewable Energy Society told the Beijing News that Wen'an should learn from the successful experience of Laizhou, Shandong province, where the government facilitated 2,000-3,000 under-regulated small shops to merge into a few hundred bigger, registered companies.

I hope Wen'an can push beyond the current crackdown and transform its plastics recycling industry into a truly sustainable business that not only makes money but also preserves the environment.

The change won't happen without pain. But Wen'an, and many other small towns villages in China, need it, desperately.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on September 16, 2011 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Waste plastics smugglers sentenced in China

Two people were recently convicted at a regional court in China of smuggling waste plastics into the country. One faces 13 years of jail time and 15 million yuan (US$2.4 million) of fine, and the other 10 years in prison and 5 million yuan (US$790,000) of fine.

The two - one Chinese native, the other born in Vietnam but immigrated to China through marriage - smuggled a total of 19,893 metric tons of waste plastics from Vietnam into China's Guangxi autonomous region from January 2009 through April 2010, according to China News Service.

The plastics scrap was purchased in Vietnam, smuggled through a river on the border, and then transferred to other regions in China. The well-organized crime evaded at least 20 million yuan (US$3.2 million) in tariffs.

Five other accomplices were also sentenced to prison time of three years or longer, as well as fines.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on November 3, 2011 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Coke China stops using PVC labels

Starting last month, Coca-Cola the global beverage giant has stopped using PVC labels on the bottles of all its products in China, a move that defines its leading position in the sustainability movement in that nation.

The company explained that while PVC complies with the safety regulations on beverage labeling, it may cause harm to the environment if it's improperly recycled, according to a China Daily story.

The story was ambiguous about what sort of harm PVC labels cause in the environment. But plastics recyclers in the U.S. have been lobbying for Coke and other food and beverage companies to stop using PVC labels on PET bottles because the materials are not compatible in the same recycling stream.

The China Business Times, which broke the news among Chinese-language media from an environmental innovation show last week in Guangzhou, added a comment itself that PVC is considered potentially toxic and could leak cancer-causing chemicals. While that statement is debatable, media messages are making consumers in China increasingly cautious about product and packaging materials.

Coca-Cola is the first beverage company in China that has completely ceased the use of PVC labels on all products, said China Business Times. Labels are now made of OPP (oriented polypropylene) and other types of materials.

Also on the sustainability front, the company started last year using super lightweight bottles for its Chinese water brand Ice Dew, which can save 6,200 tons of PET annually based on 1 billion bottles of annual sales.

As well, it now sells products in plant-based bottles in Shanghai and Taiwan, after a high-profile launch of the plant bottles at the Shanghai World Expo last May.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on November 16, 2011 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Japan's Ajinomoto uses fully recycled PET bottles

Japan's beverage manufacturer Ajinomoto General Foods (AGF) has unveiled a new plastic bottle that's made from 100 percent recycled PET, and will start to expand its use to all of its main products starting in February, Japanese media reported. The company expects to consume 4,500 metric tons of recycled PET in the new bottles annually.

According to the Nikkei Business Publications, PET Refine Technology Co., a subsidiary of Toyo Seikan Group, supplies the bottles to AGF. The company uses its chemical recycling technology.

AGF said the chemically recycled PET costs about the same as virgin PET. Toyo Seikan said it managed to reduce production costs through equipment improvements.

The Nikkei report said the Japanese industry previously had two players that carried out bottle-to-bottle PET recycling -- PET Reserve and Teijin Fiber. However, due to raw material shortages caused by waste bottle exports to China, PET Reserve filed bankruptcy in 2008 and Teijin suspended the recycling business.

PET Refine Technology took over PET Reverse and continued to develop the market, the report said. It supplied 19,500 tons of recycled PET resin to beverage manufacturers in 2010.

AGF is a joint venture of Ajinomoto Co. Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc.

Posted by Nina Ying Sun on December 20, 2011 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)