China's Pollution problem

[GeneChing]

I was tempted to post this as an independent thread when the issue first surfaced in world news, but it'll sit well here. There's a relevant post in the Shaolin forum already.

OPINION ASIA February 5, 2013, 11:20 a.m. ET
How Beijing Hid the Smog
China can reverse its air pollution nightmare by committing to real transparency and enforcement.
By STEVEN Q. ANDREWS

Last month Beijing's air quality horror show reached a nightmarish crescendo. January 2013 recorded by far the highest levels of pollution in recent years. Judging by the statistics, the smog that engulfed China's capital was as inevitable as it was apocalyptic. Though government only began reporting concentrations of harmful fine particulate pollution earlier this year, concentrations of a key precursor, nitrogen dioxide, have been significantly higher than 2008 levels for each of the past four years.

China can reverse this downward spiral, but only by committing to the kind of real transparency and enforcement that have historically been in short supply.

When Beijing began reporting air quality data 15 years ago, officials congratulated themselves for their transparency, then turned around and tried to paint a rosy picture. In order to promote progress in combating pollution and put pressure on government officials, days that met China's air quality standards were called blue sky days. Amazingly, every single year the reported annual tally of blue sky days increased—even as pollution levels further deteriorated.

Though the Chinese government has continued to report raw data, it ended the blue-sky campaign in early 2012 because of growing public skepticism about official blue sky counts. That skepticism was fueled by hourly updates from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing's Twitter feed. Since August 2008, the embassy has tweeted independently measured pollution concentrations and described them according to a health index developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The effort revealed that China's blue sky days often had hazardous levels of pollution. Using Embassy data, Chinese programmers developed mobile apps that have been downloaded more than one million times. One app, rather than telling people whether it was a blue sky day, used a more effective metric: whether a pollution mask should be used when venturing out in the smog.


Getty Images
A tourist walks through severe pollution in Tiananmen Square, Jan. 31.

For most of the last month, a mask has been recommended. The monthly average fine particulate concentration in January 2013 was 200 micrograms per cubic meter. To be considered good in the U.S, air must have a daily fine particulate concentration of no more than 12 micrograms.

Last month, nine days in Bejing had hazardous fine particulate concentration more than 300 micrograms and Jan. 13 reached an apocalyptic 630 micrograms. Even Beijing's annual average of more than 90 micrograms in recent years has been far higher than the worst day at the worst monitoring station in the smoggy U.S. city of Los Angeles (60 micrograms).

If Beijing wants to get serious about tackling pollution, it won't be enough to come clean on air quality data. The government also needs to toughen the health standards by which that data is judged. Although China's descriptions of pollution were recently revised, pollution levels that are six times higher than the U.S. standard are still classified as good air quality. Even the highest daily fine particulate concentration recorded last year in Los Angeles would be considered good in China.

Enforcement poses another challenge. There's no doubt that the Chinese government can deliver genuine blue skies for important events. Despite world-wide concern, the Olympics had reasonable air quality. During both the 60th anniversary of the Communist party in October 2009, and the once-a-decade Communist Party transition in November 2012, air quality was again relatively good.

But while Beijing can require emissions control measures and create temporary good air quality when there is a political imperative, regular environmental enforcement is largely non-existent. The U.S., in contrast, has had relatively strong and consistent enforcement.

In 2008, the EPA under President George W. Bush, sometimes criticized for weak enforcement, collected a civil penalty of more than $5 million from Exxon Mobil for failing to monitor and report emissions at a single refinery in Texas. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 10 civil penalties of more than $1 million for various violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act. Required pollution control investments under the penalty agreements totaled approximately $1 billion.

In China, the maximum statutory fine for refusing to report emissions data is only 50,000 yuan ($7,653) and penalties for exceeding emission standards can only reach twice that at 100,000 yuan. Although transparency on fines is lacking, state-run media reported in 2011 that the Ministry of Environmental Protection fined 11 power plants for disabling monitoring equipment, manipulating data and exceeding standards.

The violators included China Power Investment, China Guodian, China Huadian and China Datang. China Datang, a Global 500 company which owns three of the offending plants, is a state-owned enterprise. The total fine for each facility was never more than 150,000 yuan.

Even in the absence of much transparency on enforcement, it's easy to understand why factories cheat. It costs less to pay penalties for exceeding emissions limits than it does to use the emissions control equipment that plants have already been required to install.

China is in the process of revising its Air Pollution Control Law. Beijing also recently released its own new air pollution regulations for public comment. If penalties for violations are increased, there is hope that meaningful enforcement and lasting air quality improvements will finally begin. But for now, unless you are visiting Beijing for a major event, be sure to pack a pollution mask.

Mr. Andrews is an environmental and legal consultant based in Beijing.

[GeneChing]

Algae is life. They don't need to 'restore life' here. They need to stop dumping synthetic chemical fertilizers there.

A Lost Renoir? River in China Looks Like an Oil Painting
2 days ago by John Stuart Translations



With its saturated colors, a picture of a lake in China’s Anhui Province looks like a painting that could have been done by the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. No Photoshop trickery here though, the above image is an actual photograph of the lake. But how did it get this way?



Though it looks like green paint, the slime-like substance scooped off the lake’s surface in the above photo is in fact algae, which, due to the effects of synthetic chemical fertilizers, has bred in large numbers. Though continued economic growth has brought prosperity to some parts of the country, accompanying environmental pollution problems such as urban air quality and the state of lakes like this one are once again attracting attention.



The Chinese government has reportedly spent 7.4 billion yen (about 77 million US dollars) in an effort to restore life to the lake shown here.

Comments posted on the Internet in reference to the top photo include, “it looks like a piece by Van Gogh,” “it resembles a green tea latte,” and “it’s like a landscape painting.” We in Japan cannot be too smug, however, as our own country experienced a plethora of similar environmental issues during its rapid growth stage in the 60s and 70s. Hopefully those experiences can be leveraged to help improve the situation in China and we can work together in creating and sustaining a better global environment.

[GeneChing]

More fallout from the pigs perhaps?

Are Rotting Pig Corpses to Blame for China’s Electric Pink Drinking Water?
2 days ago by Andrew Miller




A little while back, we reported on the air pollution problem over in China. This week, however, a different form of pollution has come to light. On first sight, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a prop from a mutant zombie movie. However what can be seen in the picture above is in fact the tap water of a residential area in Jinan, China. In total, over 500 inhabitants of the area have fallen victim to this most recent ‘pink water’ phenomenon.

Obviously drinking the stuff is out of the question and many residents have been forced, as a temporary measure, to secure rations of bottled water. Just how contaminated this water is remains unclear, but even more intriguing is what caused the phenomenon in the first place. And how harmful could it actually be? Could simply giving the stuff a good, long sniff be hazardous to people’s health?



Looking closely at the above pictures, one gets the impression that the liquid pouring out of the kitchen tap is highly poisonous. Not needing to go so far as to analyse the substance to know it’s a clear health hazard, the residents witnessing the problem first-hand are left with no choice but to buy bottled water and wonder what the cause of it could be.

There have been reports in recent weeks of dead pigs being dumped and washed down the Haunpu river in Shanghai, with many of the animals confirmed as being diseased. However any direct correlation between this and the pink water phenomenon in Jinan has been denied. Nevertheless, with frequent instances of air and environmental pollution in some form or another, China’s inner-city residents are beginning to distrust their government more each day.



Even in Japan, incidents of discoloration in the drinking water are occurring on a daily basis somewhere across the country. However, in this instance, discoloration is normally related to rusty pipes and has no connection to the quality of the water supply itself.

Admittedly, one can foresee similar problems arising again in the future if measures to halt pollution aren’t put in place by the Chinese government.

Thoughts from readers around the world regarding China’s pink water issue include:

It’s got to be potassium permanganate.

Pollution from the sewer system.

Holy water.

I’m not sure what it is but just thinking about it terrifies me.

I like the color!

Boiling it would surely make it drinkable. Not a problem.

It shivers me to the bones to think what type of raw chemicals have seeped out this time.

Pig corpses.

We’ll have more on this story as it breaks.

[Sima Rong]

Oh ****, pink drinking water! That is crazy.

I remember a long time ago when I was a student at Shanghai Foreign Languages University there was a creek by the university that smelled awful. It would have been highly poisonous. I think there were several paint factories nearby pumping into the river, since the colour changed almost daily: sometimes blueish, sometimes milk coloured, sometimes milky-green. Anyway, one day there were workman knocking down a brick wall by the creek, and watching from about the sixth floor up with my roommate, we were praying to ourselves that they didn't fall in, since whatever was in the river, I can't imagine putting it anywhere near your skin would be at all healthy, let alone, god forbid, drinking some. Thankfully, they survived without taking an acid dip.

And the river full of dead pigs now too! What's happening?!

It wasn't that long ago too that Beijing had the worst levels of air pollution ever. What will China do about this? It needs to move forward yes, but this isn't.

[bawang]

Oh ****, pink drinking water! That is crazy.

I remember a long time ago when I was a student at Shanghai Foreign Languages University there was a creek by the university that smelled awful. It would have been highly poisonous. I think there were several paint factories nearby pumping into the river, since the colour changed almost daily: sometimes blueish, sometimes milk coloured, sometimes milky-green. Anyway, one day there were workman knocking down a brick wall by the creek, and watching from about the sixth floor up with my roommate, we were praying to ourselves that they didn't fall in, since whatever was in the river, I can't imagine putting it anywhere near your skin would be at all healthy, let alone, god forbid, drinking some. Thankfully, they survived without taking an acid dip.

And the river full of dead pigs now too! What's happening?!

It wasn't that long ago too that Beijing had the worst levels of air pollution ever. What will China do about this? It needs to move forward yes, but this isn't.

i visited shanghai last month and its the cleanest city i seen in china. they seemed to clean up a lot of garbage and pollution.

[Sima Rong]

i visited shanghai last month and its the cleanest city i seen in china. they seemed to clean up a lot of garbage and pollution.

yes, nowadays shanghai has a lot more trees and green spaces, and significantly less pollution than places like Beijing. To be fair, my statement was from a long time ago. But there are less bikes around now than then and more cars. Still, yes, shanghai isn't too bad. Not great, but much better than many other cities in china yes.

[TaichiMantis]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/52...-fight-air.htm

A primary school in China has started teaching children kung fu - as a form of self-defence against air pollution.

Heavily contaminated smog is a huge problem in China, with children regularly kept indoors to protect them.

Many children grow up with asthma and other respiratory illnesses and the pollution was recently blamed for a child being diagnosed with lung cancer. State media said the eight-year-old girl had contracted the disease after being exposed to harmful particles in the air throughout her life.

In a bid to protect children from the air pollution, the Guangming Road Primary School in China's northern Hebei province has designed kung fu aerobics to mitigate the effects of the smog on the body, Xinhua reports.

The school has developed 23 moves, two of which involve pressing an acupoint and breathing deeply into the belly.

Acupoints boost immune system

Wei Huangiang, the deputy dean of the school who designed the kung fu aerobics, said the moves are effective against air pollution: "Pressing the Hegu acupoint, located between the thumb and index finger at the back of the hand, helps promote lungs' detoxification. Breathing into the belly dispels more residue gas left in human organs, reducing the harm caused by smog."

The kung fu moves can be performed in the classroom and the exercises take about two minutes to complete. All the 470 students at the school are required to do the exercises four times per day on smoggy days.

He Linxuan, a fourth-grade student, said: "The smog particles inhaled in our lungs are harmful, and we have to wear mouth cover on our way to school or home. We were taught that the aerobics help us to get rid of the dirty particles."

However, not all are convinced about the health benefits of kung fu aerobics. Some online users said it is unrealistic to think a few simple moves can prevent the health effects of air pollution.

Liu Erjun, a doctor with the traditional Chinese medicine department of the First Affiliated Hospital, said that while pressing certain acupoints during exercise can help to enhance people's immune systems, it is not clear how much help it would be in preventing diseases caused by the smog.

[GeneChing]

...but on another thread: Eating bitter in China

[TaichiMantis]

...but on another thread: Eating bitter in China

*sigh* my fu is weak

[GeneChing]

Chinese medicine expert says 'anti-smog' teas ineffective
11 January 2017


TAOBAO
This "anti-smog" tea sold on Taobao promises to "boost lungs and moisten throats"

As parts of China continue to be engulfed by choking smog, many are turning to traditional Chinese medicine to combat the pollution's effect on their health.
One practice that has gained popularity is drinking "anti-smog" tea, which some believe can "clean" their lungs.
But a leading Chinese medicine practitioner has sought to dispel this myth, saying it is ineffective.
"Anti-smog" teas have become more widely available in Chinese medicine shops, pharmacies and online sites as the smog in China has worsened over the last few years.
There are different recipes, but they generally are made up of Chinese herbs such as dried flowers and roots.
The practice stems from the Chinese medicinal belief that drinking certain concoctions can boost one's health and rid the body of impurities.
A 2015 report by Beijing Morning Post noted that several pharmacies in the capital were selling "lung-cleansing teas to combat smog".
On popular online marketplace Taobao, "anti-smog" teas can be bought for 20 yuan (£2.20, $2.90) per packet and one listing claims that its combination of seven ingredients including dried chrysanthemums and honeysuckle can "boost lungs and moisten throats", and "combat the smog".


AP
Beijing has issued several pollution alerts since the smog began this winter

But in a recent report by state broadcaster CCTV, Liu Quanqing, president of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said such teas were "unreliable".
He noted, that the digestive and respiratory systems were separate, and that many teas contained ingredients which "may cause health problems if taken for a long time."
What would help instead, Mr Liu added, was maintaining a healthy diet and boosting one's immune system.
The same report also quoted officials from China's communicable disease centre as saying that using air purifiers and wearing masks were more effective in combating the smog.
'Delicious mist and haze'
The heavy pollution has become an annual occurrence during winter, affecting the north and eastern parts of China the most.
This year's smog has prompted school closures and warnings for residents to stay indoors, and triggered widespread health concerns.
One Shanghai surgeon's poem linking the smog to lung cancer recently went viral on social media.
The poem, which was originally written in English before it was translated into Chinese, describes a lung condition that is "nourished on the delicious mist and haze". That line has stirred controversy as authorities have sought to downplay the smog's health consequences.
But the surgeon, Zhao Xiaogang, told Global Times that he wanted to make the point that "the intense rise in lung cancer (in China)... is intimately related to smog".
The government has also tried to censor discussion and block protests, and municipal authorities in Beijing are even contemplating reclassifying smog.

Reporting by the BBC's Tessa Wong

I didn't even know this was a thing, but I should've assumed. It would be grand it if it worked.

[GeneChing]

Heck I'd go to Antarctica just to see it before it melts away.

My cousins went. They said they met a lot of really well traveled people there because it's one of those 'last places on earth' destinations.

Chinese tourists seek ‘lung cleansing’ trips to Antarctica and Iceland as smog worsens


Tiananmen Square: Residents in Beijing wear masks to protect themselves from the air pollution CREDIT: GETTY
Soo Kim, travel writer
17 JANUARY 2017 • 2:46PM

The growing issue of air pollution in China has caused several of its residents to plan “smog escapes” in search of clean air in far-flung places such as Iceland and Antarctica.

Online searches for keywords including “smog escape”, “lung cleansing” and “forests” were found to have tripled in the midst of the country’s ongoing smog problem, according to the “Smog Escape Travel Ranking” survey by Ctrip, a travel search website based in Shanghai, Bloomberg reports.


An elderly man walking through heavy smog at a the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing in December 2016 CREDIT: GETTY

The Seychelles, the Maldives and Iceland are among the destinations residents think will offer the freshest air, according to Ctrip, while Phuket in Thailand, Bali, Jeju Island in South Korea and the city of Sanya on Hainan Island in south-east China are among the most popular island getaway spots sought by Chinese tourists.

Heavy pollution levels have led 62 Chinese cities, including Beijing, to issue health alerts. Pollution was found to be at medium or higher levels in 186 cities, and 25 have been issued with red alerts – the highest warning level – by the country’s ministry of environmental protection.

While most of the pollution stretches from the south-west to the north-east of China, residents of the capital were found to be most keen for a smog escape, according to the report by Ctrip.

The recommended level of exposure to PM2.5 particles – ones that pose the greatest health risks – is no more than 25 micrograms per 24 hours, according to the World Health Organisation.

But the concentration of these particles was measured to be 475 micrograms per cubic metre around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square earlier this month.

Dozens of cities in China spend many winter days under a thick, grey haze, caused chiefly by thousands of coal-burning factories and a surplus of inefficient vehicles. Locals can be seen walking around the city wearing masks, while others remain in office buildings to avoid the toxic air.

Earlier this month, officials in Beijing announced it would be deploying a new environmental police force to help fight the war against smog, focusing on pollution from open-air barbecues, garbage incineration and the burning of wood and other biomass.

The city also said it would be closing 500 factories that have been a source of pollution, while 2,560 other companies would be forced to clean up their operations. High-polluting vehicles will also be restricted in the city from next month, the Beijing Daily reports.

“The root cause of the region’s smog problems, from a long-term perspective, is the unclean industrial and energy mix, which require big changes,” Chen Jining, the country’s minister of environmental protection told the Xinhua News Agency.

The ministry is reviewing emergency plans for the 20 cities in the country facing the highest amount of air pollution, the minister said.

The Beijing Tourism Development Commission also reported a 24 per cent decrease in visits to the city’s popular tourist sites, dropping to 1.84 million visitors between December 31 and January 2. But the cause for the decline is unclear and wasn’t specifically attributed to the city's air pollution problem.

[GeneChing]

As seen in Playboy. Which I read for the articles.

These “Vertical Forests” Developed by Architects in China Will Soak Up Smog
By Joshua A Fruhlinger
February 8, 2017



It’s no secret that China has an air pollution problem. It’s so bad that at the beginning of 2017, Beijing had to cancel dozens of flights at their main international airport due to smog created by the massive need for coal-fueled heat in the cold winter months.

They’re starting to do things about it, including investing in wind farms, solar plants and other environmentally friendly energy sources. But until those things become commonplace in the world’s most populous country, the smog will remain a huge issue.

But one of the more creative - and beautiful - concepts to help curb pollution in China is this “vertical forest” design that blankets tall buildings in verdant trees. The buildings, from Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti, are planned for the Pukuo District of Nanjing. They will include 1,100 trees along with 2,500 plants that will cascade from external shelfs and terraces.

As for their environmental impact, the designers claim that the vertical forests will absorb 25 tons of carbon dioxide per year and will produce 60 kilograms of oxygen on a daily basis.

These aren’t just concepts, either. The firm says the buildings will be completed in 2018, and they hope to build something similar in Shanghai, Chongqing, Liuzhou, Shijazhuang and Guizhou. They’ll be pretty tall as well, standing at a towering 656 feet. These buildings will include commercial space, office space, a museum, an architecture school and a private rooftop club. There are also plans to include a Hyatt hotel in one of the towers.

This has already been seen on a much smaller residential scale in Veitnam, and we’re still pretty stoked about it.

[GeneChing]

...too bad they couldn't just invest in clean energy like America. Oh wait...

Pedestrians wearing masks walk on a road that is blanketed by heavy smog on Jan. 5, 2017, in Jinan, Shandong province, China VCG/Getty Images
CHINA

Chinese People Are Buying All Kinds of Desperate Remedies to Protect Themselves From Smog
Charlie Campbell / Beijing
Feb 13, 2017
Following a welcome burst of blue skies over Lunar New Year, chronic smog returned to northern China this week, prompting the wearing of face masks and the switching on of air purifiers as airborne particle levels soared to 10 times WHO safe levels.
The government said it was making efforts to deal with the choking haze, from slashing coal consumption in the capital Beijing by 30%, and the threat of legal action against the worst offending local authorities, to proposed cutbacks to the coal and steel industries. (Though Greenpeace claims the latter actually grew in capacity last year.)
But the enduring smog is good news for one section of society: peddlers of antipollution products. The range of prophylactics has grown enormously over the last few years, and ranges from the sensible — such as ever more sophisticated face masks and air purifiers — to the highly dubious, such as antismog herbal teas.
Boasting ingredients such as “polygonatum, kumquat, lily, red dates, chrysanthemum and rock candy,” the latter are claimed by manufacturers to "alleviate the harm to the human body of long-term inhalation of air pollution.” Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners are unimpressed, though; Liu Quanqing, president of the Beijing Hospital of TCM, told China’s state media last month that such concoctions were "unreliable" and "may cause health problems if taken for a long time."


Passengers walk in the smog at Zhengzhou East Railway Station on Jan. 9, 2017, in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China VCG/Getty Images

But it’s not just teas that have dubious efficacy. China’s online trading platform Taobao — the nation’s gargantuan equivalent of eBay and Amazon — is chock-full with bizarre antismog products. There are antismog windows and antismog trees. For $5,000 you can buy a truck-mounted antismog water cannon that drenches particles from the air. Conversely, there is also antismog incense, for those who literally want to fight fumes with fumes.
For skeptics, face masks and air purifiers remain the preferred choices, and China has made major strides with both.
There are masks with built-in fans, masks just for the nose, and even couples’ masks especially for Valentine's Day. For fashionistas, Beijing designer Wang Zhijun turns high-end sneakers into face masks; one was crafted from a pair of Kanye West–designed, limited edition Adidas Yeezy Boosts that were recently sold online for $10,000.
Air purifiers, meanwhile, are becoming cheaper and more efficient. Chinese tech firm Xiaomi leads the way with its Mi Air Purifier Pro, boasting a dual-fan, dual-motor system with "high-precision laser sensor."
“Air purifiers are made not just for smog,” company spokesman Li Zhuoqi tells TIME. “In fact, air purifiers also sell well in countries with generally good air quality as they can filter pollen, dust, airborne germs and eliminate odors.”
Xiaomi should know what it’s talking about. Late last month, global vice president Hugo Barra quit the Beijing-based firm to move back to California, saying that “the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health.”— With reporting by Yang Siqi / Sanya, China

[Jimbo]

Beijing is so polluted, I can't understand Jackie Chan leaving Hong Kong to make it his base of operations. Well, I'm sure it's business, as well as his popularity in HK took a hit for various reasons. In his position, I would have chosen elsewhere.

[GeneChing]

NOVEMBER 17, 2017 / 12:45 AM / 3 DAYS AGO
China faces waste hangover after Singles' Day buying binge
David Stanway
6 MIN READ

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Singles’ Day online discount sales bonanza on Saturday saw bargain-hungry buyers spend over $38 billion, flooding the postal and courier businesses with around 331 million packages - and leaving an estimated 160,000 tonnes of packaging waste.

The annual Nov. 11 buying frenzy is a regular fillip for giant online retailers like Alibaba and JD.com, but the mountains of trash produced from just one day of conspicuous consumption have angered environmentalists.

“Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste,” said Nie Li, toxics campaigner at Greenpeace, which estimates this year’s orders will produce more than 160,000 tonnes of packaging waste, including plastic, cardboard and tape.

Total sales from Singles’ Day hit 254 billion yuan ($38.25 billion), with 1.38 billion orders placed, state media reported. Around a quarter of the total sales involved household electric devices or mobile phones.

China’s State Post Bureau (SPB) said postal and courier companies are having to deal with at least 331 million packages, up 31.5 percent from last year.

Greenpeace described the annual promotion as a “catastrophe for the environment” that not only creates waste, but leads to a surge in carbon emissions from manufacturing, packaging and shipping. In a report published last week, it estimated that total orders last year produced 52,400 tonnes of additional climate-warming carbon dioxide.

E-commerce firms have drawn up measures aimed at solving the problem, and aim to replace cardboard boxes with reusable plastic ones that courier companies can share. They have also experimented with biodegradable delivery bags and tape-free boxes, but Nie said the efforts were still not enough.

“China’s online retail giants have taken few real steps to reduce delivery packaging waste,” she said. “Ultimately, packaging that we throw out after one use is not a sustainable option.”

A spokesman for JD.com said it is “continually improving ways to better reduce waste and pollution” and, among other measures, aims to raise the proportion of biodegradable materials in its packaging materials to 80 percent by 2020.

Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics arm said in emailed comments that it had launched initiatives aimed at minimizing its environmental impact. “We are committed to work closely with different stakeholders to protect the environment and contribute to the sustainable development of the industry,” it said.

MOUNTAINS OF WASTE

China’s packaging waste problems are not confined to Singles’ Day.

Official data shows China’s courier firms delivered around 20 billion orders in 2015, using 8.27 billion plastic bags, 9.92 billion packing boxes and enough sticky tape to go around the globe more than 400 times.

Overall deliveries continue to surge, with the number of packages expected to hit 50 billion next year, up from 30 billion in 2016, according to forecasts by the SPB.

But even that’s only a small part of China’s mounting waste problem, with large sections of the country’s soil and water contaminated by untreated industrial, rural and household trash.


A laborer works at a paper products recycling station in Shanghai, China November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song

With China’s major cities producing around 2 billion tonnes of solid waste a year, they are already surrounded by circles of landfill known in Beijing as the “seventh ring road”.

China has also struggled to finance the infrastructure required to handle surging volumes of discarded white goods, consumer electronics and batteries.

Despite massive production volumes that have left the country dependent on imported raw materials, overall recycling rates in industries like steel, glass or textiles remain way behind their international counterparts.

On top of that, China has only just started to impose restrictions on imported waste, which stood at 47 million tonnes in 2015.

Recycling of foreign and domestic trash was traditionally handled by migrant workers, known as “scavengers”, who ripped apart discarded goods in back-street workshops.

But rising economic prosperity means fewer people seek to make a living recycling waste, and tougher environmental regulations have forced small-scale recyclers to close.

CONSUMER HABITS

As well as ordinary couriers, China’s many food delivery services are under pressure to reduce waste. The Chongqing Green Volunteer League, a local environmental group, said earlier this year it was taking legal action against some operators for failing to handle the problem.

Activists claimed just one online delivery platform used enough chopsticks every day to destroy the equivalent of 6,700 trees. They said the firms fail to inform customers or give them opportunities to choose greener options.

Hu Zhengyang, a director at the China Packaging Association, told Reuters that his own industry body had appealed to delivery businesses to use fewer materials, but he said it ultimately “required more attention from government and ordinary people.”

The SPB issued new guidelines to deal with the problem last year, urging delivery companies to eliminate substandard packaging products by the end of 2020, and to establish a proper recycling system.

Delegates from central China’s Henan province, who raised the issue of packaging waste at this year’s parliament, said courier firms should be punished for violating rules, and incentives are needed to encourage the use of recyclable materials, which often cost more.

“This is not going to be welcomed by courier companies or consumers, and it needs state support in areas like policy, financing and taxation,” they said.

Ultimately, said Greenpeace’s Nie, it needs a shift in consumers’ mind-set.

“If we really want to ‘green’ our buying habits, we need to consume less, re-use more and go back to repairing things that are broken,” she said.

Reporting by David Stanway and the Shanghai newsroom; Additional reporting by Cate Cadell in BEIJING; Editing by Ian Geoghegan

Single Day & China's Pollution Problem.