The most populous country in the world is drowning in plastic. Now the management of plastic bags and the use of disposable products prohibits.

lunch in a Beijing office tower: The plastic waste is piling up. Photo: NA ZHOU/NYT/Redux/laif

BEIJING taz | The second largest economy in the world marked an important milestone for a plastic-free future: On Monday, the environment Ministry announced in Beijing that supermarkets spend no more plastic bags, restaurant and catering establishments use any plastic straws, and the omnipresent food couriers are allowed to use no plastic Cutlery and more. The rules should apply in all the major cities of the country starting at the end of this year. Smaller cities will be given more lead time for the new laws. You have to implement it only up to 2025.

Also in China, so widespread Online, the shipping trade is affected by the new directives. Parcel services in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai or economically booming provinces such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian or Guangdong are no longer allowed to pack the Goods in addition with plastic wrap. Also, courier services, the use of woven bags made of plastic is prohibited.

In supermarkets and other stores are to be used in an environmentally-friendly bags made of cloth, paper, or other degradable materials. Even food packaging are made of materials that decompose naturally.

And also in Hotels should be used, disposable plastic products, less. From the end of 2022 the Hotels are awarded stars are not allowed to offer to their guests products such as toothbrushes, or combs for free, you have to be sold through vending machines. In the bathrooms, and soap should be in the topping containers available.

in The consumption of plastic is China in the world at the top. In 2017, the people's Republic of the world accumulated Bank estimates, 210 million tonnes of waste-more than the United States. Because the billion people consumes a lot of plastic and little is recycled, dirty, the plastic on the landscape and often ends up in the waters.

With the Plan, hopes the Chinese government to bring the pollution to the middle of the decade "effectively under control" and the amount of plastic waste on the garbage dumps of major cities, to "reduce significantly".

for Years, the population had been imported richest country in the world in addition, the majority of recyclable plastic waste from leading industrial Nations, to the materials to process. The giant business has downsides: it is Not unusual untreated plastic were tipped waste in rivers or simply on garbage heaps dumped. Beginning in 2018, Beijing has halted imports virtually overnight, mainly to protect the local environment and air quality.

Since then, large plastic land, the quantities illegally in Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, for instance, the import of plastic waste from 2016 to 2019 has tripled. Now the government fights back. On Monday, she has sent 150 containers with a total of 3.737 tons of waste in the countries of origin, France, the United Kingdom and in the United States. 110 other containers with garbage are soon to follow, 60 of them in the United States.

China has done in terms of environmental protection last a lot: Beijing, Shanghai and the coastal cities were able to reduce the burden from fine dust is significantly, as a recent study by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air occupied. Across the country, the Problem has shifted, however, In many provinces are more heavily built coal-fired power plants.

Nevertheless, President Xi Jinping has named the environmental protection repeatedly as one of the most important challenges of the present. In 2017, China has been investing together in renewable energy, more than the USA, EU and Japan. In the meantime, every second solar cell is installed in the people's Republic.