The 2019 Climate Action Summit ended on 23rd, new york time, and the United Nations High-level Meeting Week began. At the summit, Wang Yi, Special Representative of the Supreme Leader, State Councilor and Foreign Minister, attended and delivered a speech. In his speech, Wang Yi emphasized the importance of multilateralism, and all parties should abide by the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" to help developing countries enhance their ability to cope with climate change.
With regard to "common but differentiated responsibilities", China’s "Operation Sword at the Gate" which has attracted wide international attention in recent years is one of them. Since July 2017, the General Administration of Customs of China has imposed an entry ban on certain "foreign garbage", and the crackdown on foreign garbage smuggling has been greatly increased in the "Operation Sword at the Gate" announced in early 2018.
This move has attracted international attention, but it is also accompanied by some critical voices. Some developed countries said that this move would seriously interfere with the global supply chain of waste materials, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China said that it was an important measure taken by the China government to improve the quality of the ecological environment and ensure the national ecological security.
China, Indonesian, Philippine and other Southeast Asian countries were the main recipients of foreign garbage from developed countries in the past. Should China continue to import foreign garbage? Is the past global supply chain of waste materials reasonable?
Grayson Shor has a negative attitude towards the above two questions. Shor is a young scholar devoted to the study of circular economy. Since he entered the field of international development policy research, he has always paid attention to the problem of garbage disposal in this field. On September 24th, Shor accepted an interview with The Paper, and he was glad to see that the China government was determined to promote the implementation of this policy.
Circular economy: excluding waste and garbage from economic development
"Operation Sword is putting pressure on the municipal authorities in North America and Europe to invest and expand their domestic recycling industry to deal with the garbage generated in their own countries. Because China no longer handles a large amount of imported garbage, these countries have more incentive to build their own waste recycling and waste reduction systems. " Shor said.
Some garbage imported into China is not recyclable, and the imported recyclable garbage cannot be completely and reasonably treated because of its huge quantity, which also aggravates the environmental pollution in China to some extent. Before the "Operation Sword at the National Gate" was vigorously promoted, many western European countries relied too much on China in garbage recycling. They had the highest municipal recycling rate in the world, but there was no large-scale recycling industry in their own countries. Because compared with transporting recyclable waste to China, the cost-effectiveness of building recycling industry in China is not obvious.
A national policy similar to "Operation Sword at the Gate" is the premise of promoting the circular economy system. Garbage, a product that we participate in every day, is an important input point for the development of circular economy enterprises. With countries raising the import threshold of "foreign garbage", the trend of building local garbage recycling facilities in their own countries and large enterprises has also increased rapidly in recent years, which is also in line with the development principle of circular economy.
The concept of circular economy is consistent with the initiative of this climate action summit. The summit emphasized the importance of low-carbon development and sustainability, and proposed to use market means such as carbon trading to accelerate the transformation of the global economic model, and circular economy is one of the goals of the transformation. Circular economy advocates excluding waste and pollution from economic development, improving the sustainable utilization rate of goods and materials, and thus promoting the regeneration of ecosystems.
Shor mentioned in the interview the reason why he chose circular economy as his professional development field. First of all, the crisis of global environmental change has never been well "branding", and climate scientists have not effectively explained the impact of this crisis on human beings in the past with language obviously related to personal daily life. Secondly, there are many strong environmental protection initiatives, but there is no practical implementation policy to follow up the implementation of these policies. Finally, environmentalists often regard business and industry as enemies rather than potential partners, which is actually not desirable. He believes that circular economy has great potential to improve the above three deficiencies.
At present, many developing countries and developed countries are struggling with the rapidly evolving waste management crisis. A study by the World Bank last year showed that due to rapid urbanization, the earth’s waste will increase by 70% in the next 30 years, and the plastic and infrastructure industries have the highest waste output rate.
Plastic products include plastic packaging, auto parts and wearable goods. Although large-scale plastic production began in 1950s, by 2015, more than 50% of plastic products were produced in the past 13 years. Shor mentioned that at present, a large amount of plastic waste accumulated and difficult to recycle has caused pollution, which has reached a critical value in the global oceans and waterways, and Asia is the hardest hit by plastic waste marine pollution.
In the construction industry, Shor listed some data. 40% of the world’s garbage comes from the construction and demolition of buildings, and with the global infrastructure investment increasing from 2.7 trillion US dollars in 2019 to 3.2 trillion US dollars in 2029, it is estimated that by 2025, the total amount of garbage caused by the construction industry in the world will double.
"I don’t think I need to elaborate here on how the large amount of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels used to make plastics and building materials have led to climate change. In the product life cycle design of these industries, if the circular economy method is not adopted, a vicious circle of producing more polluting products will be formed. " Shor said. Only by focusing the solution of circular economy on these two industries, carbon emissions can be effectively reduced, which can not only achieve the sustainable development goals put forward by the United Nations, but also help to achieve the goals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
In 2018, Dalian Customs seized 28 cases of smuggling imported solid waste, and verified more than 7,300 tons of foreign garbage involved, involving more than 100 million yuan. The picture shows some solid wastes seized by Dalian Customs. Vision china data map
Industrialization of waste treatment is the future development direction.
The concept of circular economy is not abstract, but it advocates the transformation of traditional business model. Shor, for example, take street lamps that can be seen everywhere. In the traditional business model, street lamps are purchased and installed by municipal managers. When street lamps are damaged, the managers allocate funds to buy and replace new street lamps. However, if the "purchase" in this process is replaced by "lease", it will become a benign link in the circular economy.
"These companies that produce light bulbs will be more motivated to make light bulbs that last longer and are more efficient, because they can get more income from the continuous rent. They may have spent a relatively short time designing light bulbs before, and the growth of company profits depends on users throwing away old products and buying new products. " Shor explained.
During his master’s degree, Shor participated in the work of the U.S. Intergovernmental Working Group on Marine Litter in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Over the past year or so, he visited Taiwan Province as a visiting scholar sponsored by the State Council, USA, provided circular economy consultation for American Institute in Taiwan, and cooperated with the offices of Asia Foundation in Myanmar and Thailand to help Myanmar develop an effective waste management system by using GIS.
Southeast Asia is the focus of Shor research, and it is also the hardest hit area of global marine pollution. Shor chose Taiwan Province as the activity center of his field work because he thought that Taiwan Province’s achievements in the industrialization of waste treatment could provide reference for Asia.
Shor said that the core of waste treatment industrialization in Taiwan Province lies in the "Extended Producer Responsibility". According to the law, companies that produce or import plastics in Taiwan Province must pay by unit, and this fee will go into the management fund of Taiwan Province Environmental Protection Department to help nearly 700 recycling companies in Taiwan Province collect garbage. The continuous and effective implementation of this strategy has collected a large number of open source data for waste treatment, and the income also covers 150% of the cost of recycling industry in Taiwan Province. Shor believes that most solutions to climate problems are developed and tested in western countries first, which may not be suitable for the situation in Asia. Comparatively speaking, the Taiwan Province model mentioned above may be more suitable for the industrial transformation of waste treatment in Asia.