Early this October, the 12th five-year Chinese plan on hazardous wastes pollution control has been released jointly by four national ministries with the aim to quicken the country’s macro strategy shift in economic growth pattern while advancing energy conservation & emission reduction.
The new plan proposes to greatly improve urban performance in hazardous waste (HW) innoxious treatment and disposal during the 12th five-year period (between 2011 and 2015). By 2015, key (large-scale) HW-generated enterprises at city or above level administrative regions will be required to ensure an elementary fulfillment for HW innoxious recycling and disposal; medical wastes of all city areas must go through innoxious disposal treatment. For the nationwide spot-check of standardized HW treatment management, the plan has made clear that by 2015 HW-generated enterprises meeting the standard must account for over 90% of the entire industry; and entities engaged in HW operation over 95%.
To achieve this, China is seeking to start with the following nine specific task programs:
1) Launching a new round of nationwide investigation into data of HW generation, transference, storage, recycling and disposal.
2) Exploring actively the reduction of HW sources.
3) Coordinating regional plan on concentrated disposal construction such as combustion and landfill through long-term concentrated siting, cross-region and multi-sector cooperation.
4) Developing professional HW recycling service.
5) Strengthening the innoxious disposal of industries involved in heavy metals.
6) Promoting the innoxious disposal of medical wastes.
7) Promoting recycling and disposal of non-industry HW and seeking resolution to left-over HW problems of the past.
8) Improving HW facility operation and HW treatment technical studies.
9) Improving the national HW supervision institution.
In specific, China plans to establish a dynamic list of key HW involved entities at both national and local level. There’s also consideration for approaching a unified HW management and registration system. The country will make efforts to promote a compulsory Cleaner Production (CP) program and encourage extensive use of CP technology or production processes among key HW-generated industries and enterprises. These include sectors such as chromium salt, PVC, fluorescent light, lead and zinc smelting, electronic components, lead acid battery and pesticide preparation, etc. The plan indicates that HW professional services like categorized collection, storage, transportation and pre-treatment should make a steady progress in typical industrial parks where large numbers of HW-generated entities gather while unit HW generation is small.
In terms of regulatory support, the plan has placed on the agenda the preliminary study of formulating and revising a bunch of essential state rules and inventories in relation to solid and hazardous waste pollution control. Two fundamental regulations concerning the environmental control of solid waste pollution and the administration of HW operation license will be amended. The revision attempts to create a licensing system that will allow HW-generated entities to handle HW disposal by themselves and to settle lifelong responsibility for HW pollution compensation and punishment. Also to be revised include the inventory of the national hazardous wastes and the list of classification of medical waste. The former is expected to be more specific on HW exemption cases.
China currently adopts a system of HW operation license for entities intending to enter the HW operation business. In 2010, about 1500 entities across the nation obtained the HW operation License with a total workload of HW recycling and disposal reaching 8,400,000 tones, which is increased by 180% compared with 2006. However, the present disposal capacity covers only half of the amount of HW generated during the first national HW investigation. Moreover, overall loading factor of all current HW facilities is less than 40%. In general, due to inadequate HW data known, low disposal capacity, weak supervision and technical support plus vast left-over HW problems, China is still confronted with a grim prospect in addressing the hazardous waste pollution control and prevention.
Insiders now predict that China’s hazardous wastes generated during the 12th five-year period are sure to continue the rising trend, with an estimated output of 60 billion tones in 2015. The new plan will give rise to three priority projects focusing on the investigation into HW generation and stockpiling, HW recycling and disposal, and its stewardship & relevant capacity-building. As good news to the domestic market, the implementation of the three above projects would forcefully boost industries with investment in HW recycling and disposal facilities. According to the Plan, estimated output value for the entire industry will climb to 2 trillion RMB (app. 32.1 billion USD or 24.9 billion EUR) from 2011 to 2015. Expenses for HW concentrated disposal methods such as combustion and landfill may exceed 50 billion RMB (app. 8 billion USD or 6.2 billion EUR). The total budget for the three projects will amount up to 26.1 billion RMB (app. 4.2 billion USD or 3.25 billion EUR).
