white pollution

For more than a decade, foamed cutlery has played a significant role in ensuring people’s diet health and fast-paced lifestyle due to their low price and high quality. The annual usage of the foamed tableware is as high as 100,000 tons (equivalent to 20 billion meal boxes). The volume of more than 200 million cubic meters. However, due to the fact that consumers are arbitrarily discarded, the recycling process is not timely, and the product itself is decomposed and rotted difficultly, it causes increasingly serious “white pollution”.
In order to effectively control the “white pollution” in the country, on January 22, 1999, the State Economic and Trade Commission issued an order No. 6 requesting that 114 products be subject to production or production deadlines for a limited period of time. Among them, 58 regulations have been completely banned nationwide since 2001. Disposable foam plastic tableware production, sales and use.
Foamed tableware is banned, it should be said that the development of new environmentally friendly tableware is a good opportunity. However, as the new environmental protection tableware industry has just emerged, the price is higher than the foamed tableware, and the quality is uneven (especially some false environmental products that do not meet the hygiene requirements and degradation requirements of disposable tableware are widely circulated in the market) and Bubble dishware has not been completely banned and many other reasons, resulting in the reality of tableware promotion work that is truly in line with environmental protection requirements.
According to the investigation and research conducted by Beijing Environmental Protection Tableware Co., Ltd. over the past years:
It must be clarified that although the state-level documents prohibiting the use of foamed tableware by law enforcement entities have been issued no less than four times, there is no clear entity for enforcement of the law in each document. As a result, there has been confusion in various areas regarding the use of foamed tableware. At present, the former State Economic and Trade Commission has been merged into the Ministry of Commerce, and the original documents continue to be valid. It is hoped that the law enforcement agencies will be determined as soon as possible.
Law enforcement efforts must be strengthened. Based on the understanding of users who are still using foam plastic utensils, the reason why they continue to use foam plastic utensils is not that they do not know to prohibit foam plastic utensils, but due to lack of clarity in enforcement or inadequate penalties. , so non-environmental tableware products are still swaggering, so that consumers confused, I do not know where to go? At present, Beijing Hyflux Environmental Protection Center has established a joint organization of environmental protection tableware companies in Beijing. The company has self-discipline, and has jointly cracked down on counterfeiting by the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, Technical Supervision Bureau and the news media to jointly safeguard the healthy development of the industry and has achieved remarkable results. The policy of prohibiting foaming tableware must be consistent with the policy of prohibiting foaming tableware throughout the country. It is also an important reason for the prohibition of foaming tableware. For example, the Beijing Municipal People’s Government issued a Decree 25 to limit sales in March 1999. The use of plastic bags and disposable plastic tableware requires the reinforcement of recycling, except for the prohibition of the sale and use of disposable foam plastic tableware at the railway stations, coach stations, airports, capital scenic spots (points) and hotels and restaurants. yuan. In addition, the People's Government of the People's Republic of China No. 84, promulgated in June 2000, puts forward the principle of “source control, recycling, gradual ban, and encourage substitution” for the management of disposable plastic lunch boxes. Beijing once relied on more than 60% of the recycling of foaming utensils to effectively solve the pollution and had a strong impact at home and abroad (but due to numerous reasons, it was completely stopped at the end of 2002), while Shanghai and other places continued to recycle foam plastic tableware, In Shanghai, as long as the recycling fees are paid as required, the foamed tableware can continue to be produced. This also conflicts with the state's policy of prohibiting foaming tableware to a certain extent. Therefore, the environmental protection tableware company calls for a ban on foaming tableware policies. Must be unified in order to completely cure the repeated prohibition of foamed tableware.
The standard of environmental protection tableware must be the same What is the use of foamed tableware? This problem has not been solved very well because there are currently two sets of standards for environmentally friendly tableware. One set is the "General technical conditions for disposable degradable tableware GB18006.1-1999" promulgated by the National Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision on November 19, 1999, and the other one is issued by the State Environmental Protection Administration on June 4, 2001. “Technical Requirements for Environmental Labeling Product Certification—Disposable Tableware” (HBC1-2001). These two standards have some differences in terms of product categories and indicators. The former mainly set standards for degradable tableware, while non-foaming Non-degradable but easy to recycle utensils such as polypropylene are not specified, while the latter makes it clear that this type of product can be used (because the world is using), as long as the recovery rate reaches 75% can get the environmental certification mark. Due to the different requirements of the standards, the testing department, production and research units, operators and users have caused some confusion, and it has also brought great difficulties to law enforcement agencies. Therefore, related companies strongly urge that the standards for environmental protection tableware urgently need to be consistent.
The production according to the standard has also become an imperative. There are many reasons for why foaming tableware can never be avoided. However, the poor quality of alternatives is one of the main reasons. At present, environmental-friendly tableware used in the domestic market is dominated by non-foam plastics and pulp moldings, accounting for about 60%. Some cities such as Dalian and Wuhan have completely banned foam plastic tableware, and some cities and regions, such as More than 80% of Guangdong Province, especially Shenzhen, are still using foam plastic tableware. Since the price of products that truly meet the standards is about twice as high as that of foam plastic tableware, it really brings certain difficulties for promotion and application. A large number of foamed tableware products are filled with a large amount of filler materials and even recycled waste plastic (about 2,000 yuan per ton, and good raw materials are about 7,000 yuan per ton), so the product price (about 400ML fast food boxes as an example, the general factory price Below a dime, it is much lower than the price of a product that meets the requirements (usually more than one in five). Therefore, this type of product is widely used in the market. In the long term, it will seriously affect the real environmental protection tableware production enterprises and the industry.
Integrated management must act in a unified manner According to the Beijing Environmental Protection Tableware Alliance organization's experience in the “white pollution” governance over the years, relevant departments of industry and commerce and technology supervision and other relevant departments at present should intensify efforts as soon as possible to continue cracking down on foamed plastic tableware while counterfeiting environmental protection. Tableware production companies and sales personnel should investigate and impose heavy penalties as soon as possible, and at the same time expose unqualified products and their manufacturers through the news media, and environmental protection tableware manufacturers should strictly and consciously organize production according to relevant standards to protect consumers. Physical health and the effective solution of "white pollution" make unremitting efforts!