“Would you like a bag?” Consumers will always hear this when they check out at supermarkets and convenience stores. Naturally, everyone directly defaults to plastic bags. However, few people know that on June 1 this year, it is the ninth year that the state has issued a “plastic limit order”.

    According to the "People's Daily" reported on June 9, the "plastic limit order" 9 years ago clearly stipulated that from June 1, 2008, the production, sale and use of plastic shopping bags with a thickness less than 0.025 mm will be banned nationwide. All supermarkets, shopping malls, bazaars and other retail outlets of goods are not allowed to provide plastic shopping bags for free. But now it has existed in name only.

    Why is it that it is in name only? In the process of consumers shopping, small shops directly provide free plastic bags, while consumers spend a few cents directly in the big stores to buy a new hand-picked plastic bag, and even the roll bag is passed on to the commodity price by means of compulsory consumption. in. As for the environmentally-friendly bags that should be used in theory, they are not seen in many supermarkets. If you want to pack things, you can only buy plastic bags. Consumers can't do environmental protection. Some merchants also promote plastic bags through "Internet +", and when they pay for the code, they can get a "bag" for free.

All of this has turned the "plastic limit order" into a "buy plastic order", and the merchants have earned a lot of money from this process.

    The “plastic limit order” has become a “buy plastic order”. Why is it?

    The People’s Daily believes that, first of all, its “alternatives” are not attractive enough. Compared with plastic bags, non-woven fabrics and other environmentally friendly bags, the “face value” has not been significantly improved, not only is the price more expensive, but also inconvenient to carry. Plastic bags can also be loaded with rubbish, even if you have to pay a small amount of money, it is completely acceptable to consumers.

According to a report previously reported by Chinanews.com, one of the advocates of the “plastic limit order”, Chen Fei, a representative of the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress, once paid a tribute to the public at the beginning of the plastic limit order. But Chen Fei said frankly that the effect of promotion is not good.

    The second problem is the lack of supervision. In the early stage of implementing the “plastic limit order”, supermarkets and vegetable markets almost every day checked the implementation effect of the policy, and the merchants naturally did not dare to let go. However, there are many manufacturers of plastic bags, and the sales channels and places of use are various. As time went by, the regulatory authorities were beyond the reach of the punishment, the punishment was getting smaller and smaller, the number of inspections was getting less and less, and the merchants acquiesced in the use of plastic bags.

    As early as 2010, the daily economic news found that the regulation of the “plastic limit order” declined, and the daily economic news said that the civil plastics policy research group (a private institution that conducts policy research on “restricting plastics”) was in 2009. According to a survey conducted at the end of the year, the implementation of the “plastic limit order” in the national farmer's market is not optimistic. In addition to the implementation rate of “plastic limit order” in Hangzhou's farmer's market reached 69.44%, the implementation rate of Chengdu, Lanzhou and Harbin was less than 30%, almost becoming a piece of paper.

    Finally, the policy was set in 2008, and now, the limitations have become more and more obvious.

The policy can't keep up with the times. In 2015, the express tape can circle the earth 425 times.

    For example, the over-packaging problem in the express delivery industry, according to the "Economic Information Daily" reported on May 24, the courier service company completed 31.28 billion business transactions in 2016, the express business income reached 397.44 billion yuan, and the GDP of Hainan Province in 2016 (404.45 billion) ) is quite higher than the GDP of Ningxia, Qinghai and Tibet.

However, while the express delivery industry is developing rapidly, the pollution of express packaging has gradually emerged. Take Longjiang County in Heilongjiang Province as an example. The local express delivery of garbage in the local county is about one-third. According to estimates, the average amount of tape used in each express delivery in China is 0.8 meters. In addition, the production of one ton of paper requires the cutting of 17 trees of ten years old and the production of one ton of plastic bags, which consumes more than 3 tons of oil.

    According to industry insiders, most of the plastic bags used in express delivery are disposable recycled plastic bags, but the main material of the tape is still polyvinyl chloride, which takes about 100 years to degrade. According to statistics, in 2015, the total length of the tape used by the national express delivery industry was 16.985 billion meters, which could circle the Earth's equator 425 times. From the perspective of recycling, Li Jianhua, chairman of Shandong Huatai Paper Co., Ltd. said that the packaging waste produced by express parcels has reached millions of tons, but the recycling rate is less than 10%.

In addition to the express delivery industry, another big problem is "takeaway." Recently, Ren Zhiqiang furiously criticized an environmental protection theme forum and the US group network ordering platform, saying that the plastic waste generated by the take-out is growing exponentially and harming the environment.

    According to the First Financial Report, a person in charge of Meituan.com told the First Financial Reporter that according to the average use of two lunch boxes per order, the current domestic Internet ordering platform uses about 40 million plastic lunch boxes a day. One. The express delivery industry needs 12 billion plastic bags and 24.7 billion meters of sealing tape a year.

    “The biggest impact on the environment at present is the disposable plastic bags and lunch boxes. The annual output is 2 million tons. Because the recycling is difficult, most of them are mixed with domestic garbage, usually directly burned or landfilled, and some are left in the environment. In the traditional environment, traditional plastics are hard to degrade in the natural environment.” Ma Zhanfeng, vice chairman of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association, told the First Financial Reporter.

    At the same time, disposable lunch boxes are basically not recyclable. According to Zhi Zhaohui, chairman of Changzhou Longjun Tianchun Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd.: “The source and composition of disposable plastic tableware materials are too complicated, which is not conducive to recycling. At the same time, Chinese food is characterized by high temperature and oil. The cost of recycling multi-acid, disposable plastic tableware is too high. Moreover, disposable plastic tableware is relatively thin and light, and the recycling value is too low. In addition, the color and printing of many disposable tableware are also difficult to recycle."

Solving the difficulty of pollution, cost is the main problem

    Moreover, the pollution caused by the large number of plastic bags currently in use is very alarming. The cost of recycling, burning or manufacturing degradable plastics is too high.

An expert from the Beijing Environmental Sanitation Monitoring Station told the First Financial News that “plastics need only be mixed into domestic garbage. The cost of sorting resources is too high, even more than making new plastics. Unless the government subsidizes, no one wants to Dry. Plastic plasticization also has secondary pollution, waste water, waste, waste residue, etc., need to be weighed. In addition, even if the industry has received only the powder has been powdered into plastic pellets, about 300-400 yuan a ton, and then returned to the countryside Some black workshops are processed.

    In addition, if you take sanitary landfills and sanitation, it is also a problem. An expert from the Beijing Environmental Sanitation Monitoring Station said that the current plastic bags are mixed with a large amount of domestic garbage. Incineration is prone to air pollution, even carcinogenic dioxin, and many landfills have no ability to incinerate, if it is landfill. As the amount of garbage generated increases year by year, large-scale landfills in large cities are operating at an overload.

    There is also a direction to study the degradation of plastic products, but the cost is also very difficult, the relevant person in charge of the rookie network also analyzed that the use of fully biodegradable bags is more expensive to produce. Take the most commonly used 28*42cm biodegradable bag as an example. If it is a million-level purchase, the purchase cost of each bag will increase by at least 0.5 yuan. Considering the volume of 8.3 billion plastic bags in the express delivery industry in 2015, Last year alone, it will increase the cost of more than 4 billion yuan. By 2020, it will cost 20 billion yuan.

    At the same time, the formulation of national standards for domestic biodegradable courier bags is currently underway, and there is still a period of time since the launch.