On June 24, 2022, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China (MEE) released the Draft Classification Catalogue of Solid Wastes1 (hereinafter referred to as the Catalogue) to solicit public comments until July 20, 2022. The Catalogue is drafted according to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste2 (hereinafter referred to the Law) to clarify the classification of solid waste and facilitate the identification and tracking of solid waste in the whole management process. The Catalogue will be dynamically updated according to the actual situation.
Scope of the Catalogue
The Catalogue does not include the solid wastes listed in the National Inventory of Hazardous Wastes3 or radioactive solid wastes.
Function of the Catalogue
The Catalogue is to serve for the daily management of solid waste, not as a basis for determine the attributes of solid wastes. Whether or not a solid waste listed in the Catalogue is a hazardous waste shall be determined according to the relevant identification standards and identification methods of hazardous wastes stipulated by the state.
Major Categories
According to the source of waste generation, solid wastes listed in the Catalogue are classified into 4 major categories (31 Sub-categories) based on the Law, i.e., ‘industrial solid waste (SW01-SW07, SW09-SW17, SW59)’, ‘household waste (SW60-SW63)’, ‘construction waste (SW70-SW74)’ and ‘agricultural solid waste (SW80-SW84)’.
Waste Codes
The Waste Code refers to the unique code of the solid waste, which consists of 8 digits (xxx-xxx-xx, see the figure above), and each part of the waste code has its own implication (see the table below).
Part of the Waste Code | Implication |
The 1st to 3rd digits | The industry sector that generates such solid waste (based on GB/T 4754-2017 Industrial classification for national economic activities4) |
The 4th to 6th digits | Sequence number (from ‘001’ to ‘009’) |
The 7th to 8th digits | Code of Sub-categories (from ‘01’ to ‘99’), i.e., Industrial solid waste: ‘01- 59’ Household waste: ‘60-69’ Construction waste: ‘70-79’ Agricultural solid waste: ‘80-89’ *‘90-99’ are reserved for dynamic update of the Catalogue |
