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On April 29, 2020, the revised Law of the People’s Republic China on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste [1] was approved by the National People Commission Standing Committee. China Xinhuanet is authorized to publish the full text of the law and the revision is scheduled to enter into force on September 1, 2020.
Last June, the draft revision was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee for review for the first time. Topics such as disposal of hazardous waste, management of industrial waste, domestic waste sorting system and so on were heatedly discussed during the review. (ChemLinked News [2]) In this article, the updates in the final version, and the specifications on hazardous waste treatment will be introduced.
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the addition of provisions involving management on medical solid waste into the Law, including the specifications on medical solid waste management during a significant pandemic, basic regulations on laboratory solid waste, and the environmental sanitation control of farmers' markets, etc.
For the municipal wastes, the revised Law mandates that local government establish a full-process domestic waste management system and emphasizes the duty of units and individuals. To reduce the municipal solid wastes from the source, compulsory national standards on limiting excessive packaging must be formulated. In addition, the prohibition and restriction of the manufacturing, sale, and use of disposable plastic products are specified in the revision.
The prevention and control of hazardous waste pollution are improved in the revision. Specifically, the management based on hazardous waste classification, the informatization supervision system, and the construction of regional centralized disposal facilities are introduced. For the cross-provincial transfer of hazardous waste, information and IT management methods, data sharing and transfer, and electronic transfer waybills are promoted to achieve high-efficiency management control throughout the transfer process. In addition, the penalty for those who illegally transfer hazardous waste has been increased again. According to the revision, violators will be subject to administrative detention in addition to fines.According to the latest version of China’s Inventory of Hazardous Waste, which is an important basis for identifying hazardous waste, all chemicals listed in the Inventory of Hazardous Chemicals are automatically categorized as hazardous waste after being discarded.
