China has a plan to ban single use plastics and Australia doesn't

China is one of the worlds largest producer of plastics and they have recently announced a plan to ban all single use plastic by 2025.

In the past 12 months, China began making big changes to the way they do waste management. These changes have reverberated throughout the rest of the world, producing economic and environmental consequences for countries like Australia. 

January 1 2018, China made a bold move by not allowing 24 categories of ‘foreign waste’ to be sent to the populous country. This has resulted in forgoing approx $513 million worth of recycling material from Australia alone. This has also put the recycling industry in Australia in a semi halted space, with no one agreeing on a solution.

Furthermore, China installed stricter contamination restrictions on waste they did accept, allowing only 0.5% contamination. This has resulted in a virtual ban, as those levels have been called unachievable by the Australian waste industry. 

Over 12 months on, China continues to make changes in regards to waste and plastic production. The most recent improvement is the announcement of banning single-use plastics. 

China has been struggling with the waste it's 1.4 billion citizens generate, with all of their mega dumps completely full 25 years ahead of schedule. 

What are they changing

• Plastic bags will be banned across all cities and towns in 2022, though markets selling fresh produce will be exempt until 2025.
• The production and sale of plastic bags that are less than 0.025mm thick will also be banned.
• The restaurant industry must reduce the use of single-use plastic items by 30%
• Hotels have been told that they must not offer free single-use plastic items by 2025.

The problem with the ban 

Swapping out single use plastics is a great initiative - but changing them to compostable alternatives won’t do much if those alternatives do not end up in a composting system. 

Real change, requires a culture shift, not just material. You can’t simply remove a product from circulation without also rolling out culture changing behaviour material.

On a surface level review, China is swapping out one plastic for another.

The challenge for China is can they responsibly, economically and environmentally deal with the influx of biodegradable products, that will replace the single use products. 

Announcing the ban is encouraging nonetheless, and may insight other world powers to follow suit.