The Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation has carried out a product quality inspection of biodegradable plastic bags. The entity is responsible for implementing the policies of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in the country’s capital.
Beijing’s market regulator sampled and inspected 29 types of biodegradable plastic bags, for garbage and shopping applications. It found that 19 out of the 29 samples (65.5%) were ‘incompatible with national standards and related product standards’, it said in a Dec. 4 statement. The products did not comply with labelling, biodegradation rate, volatile organic compound emissions, or carrying capacity by weight standards.
The market regulator said that the manufactures and sellers of the substandard products were handed over to the corresponding market supervision department for ‘handling according to the law’. It also reminded consumers to check plastic bags’ labels before purchasing them and to choose a bag suitable to the desired application.
On Sep. 15, 2021, China unveiled a five-year plan to control plastic pollution. The action plan, jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, details, amongst others, measures to develop alternatives for plastics, including biodegradable plastics, bamboo, wood, and paper. PBAT and PLA together account for 81% of the total domestic biodegradable plastic production in China.
That plan was accompanied by a ‘policy interpretation’ statement by the Secretary General of Degradable Plastics Professional Committee of China Plastics Processing Industry Association, Prof. Weng Yunxuan. In that statement, Yunxuan estimated that China’s production capacity of PBAT, mainly used for film bags, and PLA, mainly used for tableware, was approximately 300,000 tons and 10,000 tons, respectively, in 2020. Those values were expected to grow to 7 million tons and 1 million tons by 2025, respectively.
Yunxuan also said standards for biodegradable plastics were ‘gradually being improved’ in China, with the country adopting 11 ISO international standard testing methods by 2021. At the time there were about 15 internationally recognised laboratories capable of performing those tests.
“At present, the development of the degradable industry still faces imperfect standards, insufficient detection capabilities, and shortcomings in subsequent disposal,” Yunxuan wrote. “Issues such as these require continued efforts in scientific research, product performance, usage costs, etc.,” he concluded.
Incorrect disposal of biodegradable bags seriously undercuts their potential for greenhouse gas emission mitigation. Most bags in China are disposed alongside regular garbage, ending up in landfill or incinerated. Research by Tsinghua University shows that most of the biodegradable plastics that even make it to biomass treatment facilities, such as industrial composting and anaerobic fermentation, are sorted out by the equipment as impurities alongside standard plastics and cannot thus enter the final biomass degradation process.