China Wants To Ban All Single-Use Plastic By 2025

China has announced their plan to help combat the damaging effects of climate change by reducing their plastic waste as a country. One of the most harmful man-made products that’s currently killing our planet is single-use plastic. These products not only are impossible to decompose, but are the most wasteful in terms of use. Things such as the Great Pacific garbage patch and the microplastic epidemic currently taking over could’ve all been avoided had policies such as the one China is about to implement been around. 

By 2025, China is planning on reducing their single-use plastic product distribution and use greatly, starting with a ban on single-use plastic straws and bags throughout the country. Obviously, this is a major shift for such a large country, hence why the government is giving itself a 2025 goal. China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) made a statement this past Sunday (1/19) in which they claimed that certain plastics will be banned in different territories at specific times throughout the next five years to gradually phase out all single-use plastic. 

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It’s expected that the government will start with larger metropolitan areas first and then move to banning plastics in more suburban/rural areas as time progresses. It’s much easier to regulate plastic product distribution in larger cities, as most receive their shipments of single-use plastic products from the same companies, so they can collectively switch to more sustainable options. Rural areas are given more time so residential businesses can transition at their own pace. 

For example, “thin, single-use plastic bags will be banned in most stores in large cities by the end of 2020, but smaller cities and villages have until 2022 or even 2025 to begin phasing them out. By the end of 2025, hotels will no longer be allowed to provide single-use plastic items and no postal service nationwide will be allowed to use any plastic packaging,” according to the NDRC.

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China has mapped out other plastic ban specifics in their official new policy for the next five years, including a ban on all single-use plastic cutlery within China’s catering industry by the end of 2020. The plan is to have all plastic tableware phased out of China’s restaurants by 2025, however, with the takeout industry being as huge as it is, single-use containers will only be partially phased out by the end of the five years. Plastic straws will also be banned entirely throughout the whole country by the end of the year. 

A policy as major as this one happening in a country as impactful as China is extremely important, and will hopefully set a precedent for other major countries. China alone produces up to 30% of the plastic products distributed throughout the world every year, making it the number one plastic manufacturer on the planet.

The significance of that statistic is major, for example, the Yangtze River in China carries more plastic pollution into our oceans than any other water way in the world, according to the World Economic Forum. Plastic levels in our oceans are at an all time high, with an estimated 8 million tons of it being dumped into them every year, a majority of which is coming from China. While it can be argued that the damage has already been done, at least China is leading the way on making major systematic changes to at least try and combat the harmful repercussions of humanity’s actions. 

Along with the new policy, Chinese lawmakers announced that they would be creating a new comprehensive recycling program for the entire country to abide by. This way, it’ll be easier to organize and regulate the recycling process in a country as massive as this one. China is hoping it can return its country’s health to what it once was, and hopes the rest of the world catches up with them soon. Our oceans are hoping for the same.