On November 5th, 2020, the revision of the National Inventory of Hazardous Wastes was put up for discussion and fundamentally adopted at the executive meeting of the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE).
The news came following two public consultations held in September [1] and December 2019 [2], respectively (click the above links to read ChemLinkeds’ interpretations of major adjustments made in the two drafts). The existing version [3] of the National Inventory of Hazardous Wastes was published in March 2016 and came into effect on August 1st the same year.
It was pointed out during the meeting that the Inventory lays a technical foundation for the country’s environmental management of hazardous wastes, and that the revision represents a partial move to ensure alignment with the revised Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste [4].
With the revised Inventory in place, local authorities will be given a regulatory framework to enhance their capacity to identify and exercise categorized and tiered management of hazardous wastes.
It currently remains unknown what changes are delivered by the final version of the revision. We will keep a close eye on any following updates so please stay tuned to ChemLinked.
