Early returns on China's single-use plastics ban show big changes, big challenges

As China's ban on single-use plastics rolls out across the country, it's leading to noticeable changes, like milk tea shops switching to paper straws and some McDonald's and KFC establishments swapping out plastic cutlery for wooden knives and forks. But the Jan. 1 ban also faces challenges.

Industry executives are pointing to uneven enforcement, sizable price spikes and shortages of the biodegradable polylactic acid, which is often seen as a replacement for traditional plastics.

As the ban has rolled out across the world's second-largest economy, larger corporations and bigger cities are proving quickest to adapt and are most compliant, switching their bags and packaging to PLA or paper.

But many wet markets and street vendors are largely still using disposable plastics, and in smaller cities, the ban has not been rolled out on any wide scale.

Ben Ho, the head of the China Thermoforming Association, says that the government regulation of single-use plastic is running into a roadblock: a shortage of PLA.

"The big problem is the supply of such 100 percent biodegradable material is only 1-2 percent of the demand," he said. "This disaster will go on the whole year. The prices are really high and the material supply is not enough."

Ho said there is only half a million metric tons of PLA produced annually worldwide, but China needs 2 million tonnes just for its food delivery industry.

As a result, the price of PLA has nearly doubled, from $4,300 (28,000 RMB) to $7,400 (48,000 RMB) per tonne, leading to two problems.

There is not enough PLA to sustain the booming market and businesses are buying up "biodegradable" plastic bags and straws that are not actually biodegradable, he said.

Without enough supply, he said, there cannot be adequate enforcement among the independent and informal businesses who are not adhering to the new rules.

Still, residents in larger cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are seeing changes now.

Supermarkets like the popular French chain Carrefour and 24-hour convenience stores now sell reusable polypropylene woven bags for about 15 U.S. cents. Popular grocery delivery services like Hema have switched to biodegradable bags.

Similarly, fast-food chains like McDonald's and KFC have swapped out paper for plastic straws and moved to biodegradable bags.

CoCo milk tea shops started off the year offering paper straws but added in a PLA straw option, likely because of performance concerns as the paper straws were prone to getting soggy. Still, the chain did switch the plastic seal on top of its cups for paper film.

But many of those everyday changes have yet to make their way to smaller cities and towns, according to residents who spoke with Plastics News.

There seems to be an expectation that the government's plastics reduction policies will roll out over time, with targets over the next few years to reduce plastic bag consumption by 30 percent and restrict usage of other plastic products.

Smaller cities and towns will likely see the changes before 2025, industry officials believe.

It's not China's first high-profile attempt to deal with what government officials call "white pollution."

In 2008, Beijing instituted a nationwide ban on free handouts of thin plastic bags, prompting larger supermarkets and shops to charge a nominal fee for bags.

But it had little effect on overall usage, as the bags were still easily available at independent shops and the fruit and vegetable markets that are still ubiquitous in the country.

Wang Wang, chairman of the China Plastic Scrap Association, said enforcing the new regulations will likely remain difficult.

"The biggest challenge is that the cost of law enforcement is very high," Wang said. "It is because plastic bags are relatively easy to obtain from small producers everywhere in the production process, and they are also very cheap and very convenient."

Thermoforming association leader Ho said he expects that crackdowns and enforcement of the ban will get tougher if the supply of new materials can meet the demand.

China produced 81.8 million tonnes of plastic products in 2019, including 30,000 tonnes of plastic straws, according to Chinese state media.

Government officials first announced the ban in 2020 to take effect Jan. 1, and different agencies have been rolling out rules.

The Ministry of Commerce, for example, in November proposed a national reporting system requiring restaurants, e-commerce businesses, malls, wet markets and delivery firms to report to local officials on their recycling plans and how they use disposable plastics.

Various provincial level bodies have been passing their own regulations, and in late February, the National Development and Reform Commission came out with an official definition of biodegradable materials.

For some manufacturers, the ban has proven to be a boon for business.

Lou Zhongping, chairman of straw maker Soton Daily Necessities Co. Ltd. in the city of Yiwu, has been phasing out production of traditional PP straws for years.

Last year, as sales of degradable straws increased, PP straws fell to around 25 percent of its total production.

"All of our production lines have now been changed and the old production lines were sold as scrap iron at low prices," he said.

He said the company currently focuses on paper and PLA straws, with additional production for edible, bamboo and metal straws.

Lou said the plastic straw ban has created a massive shift in demand for PLA and paper, as well as a switch in geographic focus for the firm.

Previously two-thirds of his market was in the United States, Europe and Japan. But now two-thirds of Soton's demand comes from China.

Although the new policies have been a boon to Soton's business, Lou does not think PLA and paper straws are environmentally sustainable solutions.

"The reason why paper straws are so much more expensive than plastic straws is that they consume more social resources and consume more natural resources [to make them]," he said. "The PLA straw is more expensive than PP because it consumes a lot of resources, and therefore is more polluting. In essence, it is not environmentally friendly."

Lou also argued that the availability of raw materials for PLA and paper should be taken into account.

"If all disposable products are to be made of wood pulp, there is definitely not enough pulp. And PLA is mainly concentrated in a company in the United States, whose annual output is limited," he said.

Similarly, Ho said it's a complex problem, and he cautioned that government efforts could be for naught unless broader changes are implemented.

"I think government should really focus on what happens to all the biodegradable post-consumer packaging. Where are they now?" he said.

Many Chinese cities have been enforcing garbage sorting and systemizing waste collection but recycling has not been fully implemented, he said, arguing that the ban's effect would be futile if the government does not solve collection and recycling problems.

"All the efforts you make, the result is the same," he said. "In the end, all plastic and all biodegradable materials go to the burner. What a waste, and it costs more carbon."