Haruna
Thanks for the forward. China and its population growth with the rise of consumerism cannot postulate the amount of waste it will producing and where it will end up. Just wondering whether China's economic growth and the rise of its new comsumerism is sustainable in terms of its ecological footprint or environmental impact.
Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
SHANGHAI—Thin _plastic bags_
(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-are-polymers-made) are used for everything in China and the Chinese use up to three
billion of them a day--an environmentally costly habit picked up by
shopkeepers and consumers in the late 1980s for convenience over traditional cloth
bags. Fruit mongers weigh produce in them, tailors stuff shirts into them, even
street food vendors plunk their piping hot wares directly into see-through
plastic bags that do nothing to protect one's hands from being burned or
coated in hot grease. They even have a special name for the plastic bags found
blowing, hanging and floating everywhere from trees to rivers: bai se wu le, or
"white pollution," for the bags' most common color.
Yet, the Chinese government is set to ban the manufacture and force
shopkeepers to charge for the distribution of bags thinner than 0.025 millimeters
thick as of June 1—and no one seems prepared. "I don't know what we'll do,"
Zhang Gui Lin, a tailor at Shanghai's famous fabric market, tells me through a
translator. "I guess our shopping complex will figure it out and tell us what
to buy to use as bags."
His wife adds: "Maybe it will be like this," tugging a thicker mesh orange
plastic bag she is using to carry some shoes. Such thicker bags may prove one
replacement for the ubiquitous thinner versions.
The clothes makers are not alone. "I don't know actually," says a vendor of
Chinese tamales, known as zong zi, who declined to give her name. "I'm sure
the government will come up with a solution. Maybe people will just eat it
[the zong zi directly.]"
The Chinese government is banning production and distribution of the thinnest
plastic bags in a bid to curb the white pollution that is taking over the
countryside. The bags are also banned from all forms of public transportation
and "scenic locations." The move may save as much as 37 million barrels of oil
currently used to produce the plastic totes, according to China Trade News.
Already, the nation's largest producer of such thin plastic bags, Huaqiang,
has shut down its operations.
The effort comes amid growing environmental awareness among the Chinese
people and mimics similar efforts in countries like Bangladesh and Ireland as
well as the city of San Francisco, though efforts to replicate that ban in other
U.S. municipalities have foundered in the face of opposition from plastic
manufacturers.
More than one million reusable cloth bags have already been sold on various
Chinese merchandising Web sites, according to Taobao.com, and local
environmental groups, such as Shanghai Roots & Shoots, are promoting and giving away
cloth bags in schools.
"Too many plastic bags is a great waste of natural resources," retired
Communist Party cadre Liu Zhidong says through a translator. "When burnt, they
produce poisoning smoke, and if buried underneath the ground they need more than
300 years to be degraded."
But it remains to be seen how strong enforcement will be. Specific penalties
have not been set but will include fines. Other environmental efforts—such as
a similar ban on disposable wooden chopsticks (a waster of trees) and
so-called "green GDP," or gross domestic product, an effort to account for
environmental costs when calculating overall economic development— fell by the
wayside because they proved too difficult to implement and created significant
opposition at the local level. It also remains to be seen whether some of the
possible replacements—thicker or biodegradable plastic bags—will be any better.
"This is a very good measure to protect the environment. However, whether it
can last long is still very doubting," chemistry graduate student Oliver
says. "And another problem is [that] the so-called biodegradable plastic bags, it
seems, cannot be totally degraded. Whether or not they are really good for
environment protection in the long run remains unknown."
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