China to Ban All Single-Use Plastic

Good news – the most populated country on the planet is making major moves to address the looming issue of plastic pollution.

With China being the most populated country on the planet, it makes sense that they would also have one of the largest plastic problems. China doesn’t have the best waste management systems in place, therefore causing trash to pile up in streets, rivers, and eventually the ocean. It also doesn’t help that up until two years ago, China was accepting 45% of the world’s plastic waste to be (inefficiently) recycled. However, I want to emphasize that this is not an isolated issue to a singular country. We are all to blame for the nauseating amount of plastic we consume - and as citizens, consumers and simply for the sake of trying-to-be-decent-humans: we are responsible for what happens to it after it’s out of our hands.

Starting with banning plastic waste importation in 2018, China has been making serious adjustments on managing their plastic problem. This is coming at an integral time because a new study suggests that without China to take the brunt of recyclables from other countries, by the year 2030, 111 million tons of plastic waste will have nowhere to go. If that’s not a blaring alarm saying “something must change,” I don’t know what is.

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As you may already know, a shockingly low amount of plastic actually ends up getting recycled – so China has the right idea. Instead of using recycling as a crutch, why not just get at the source? Initiate groundbreaking idea: decrease plastic consumption! Kill single-use plastics! AKA: outlaw the sh*t out of that ‘ish.

According to their new guidelines, China aims to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags (a major pollutant: courier services used around 25 billion plastic bags for deliveries in 2018) in major cities by the end of this year. Other single-use plastics (such as cutlery and packaging) will be banned in Beijing, Shanghai and wealthy coastal provinces by 2022, and the rule will extend to the rest of the nation by late 2025. The government has also said that it would consider “blacklisting companies” that don’t obey these plastic bans.

When big countries start to implement changes like this, they become huge role models for other nations. Hopefully these initiatives will influence other governments to become more sustainable and environmentally conscious.