Environment Blog

Plastic Bag Ban Closes Down Chinese Factory

BEIJING (AP) — China's largest producer of plastic bags said Tuesday it has closed more than a month after the government announced a high-profile ban on stores handing out free bags in an effort to clean up the environment.
Huaqiang factory, in central Henan province, closed at the beginning of February, said a woman who answered the telephone at the factory. All 10,000 workers at the factory were sent home, said the woman, who gave only her family name, Hai, as is common in China.
Last month, China announced a ban on stores handing out free plastic shopping bags in a bid to cut waste and conserve resources. The ban takes effect June 1, two months before Beijing hosts the Summer Olympic Games, and will eliminate the flimsiest bags and force stores to charge to more durable bags.
The measure was announced by the State Council, China's Cabinet. The Huaqiang closure indicates the measure is being followed.
Many environmental regulations in China fail because of opposition from local governments, which receive tax and other revenues from local factories and are reluctant to shut them down.
The Huaqiang factory will sell its equipment and raw materials, Hai said.
Management was not immediately available for comment Tuesday. Phones at the local commerce bureau were not answered.
The factory, owned by Nanqiang Plastic Industrial Ltd., of Guangzhou in southern China, produced 250,000 tons of plastic bags a year, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

My thoughts:
Although we were asked to find the article in the RSS feed, when I came across this one, I just could not help but post it.
Shutting down the factory and laying-off 10,000 people is insane. I understand that there are so many plastic bags flying around in China, they are called “white pollution.” But I also read that the government is pushing spit bags so that the Chinese will spit in the bags instead of, well… anywhere else. This, of course, is part of the clean-up campaign before the Olympics. So why not convert (at least for now) this plastic bag plant into a spit bag plant? I understand they are flimsy bags, but really, how much can spit weigh! What about education in recycling. I take some canvas bags to the grocery store and I also use some of the plastic bags provided, which I later recycle. This is something that can be implemented in China. I am no engineer, but maybe there was an inexpensive way to produce more durable (& reusable) bags, which are permitted. The raw materials had already been purchased, so maybe a little tweaking of the mold injection tool or the amount of resin used would have done the trick. Or, what about switching from three shifts to one (I am assuming the factory worked 3 shifts), which would save some of the jobs, reduce consumption, and start a “conversation” on what better environmental alternatives could be produced at the plant. China should be looking at possible “green jobs”, which could be both profitable and environmentally conscientious. Of course, if the owner of the plant was upset about the new regulation and wanted to prove a point by shutting down the plant, there is no amount of tweaking, restructuring or remarketing to have kept it open and saved those jobs. Hopefully the plant will re-open as a canvas bag plant and everyone can live in harmony!

Lesson 6

Commuters in Beijing asked to give up bus seats

(China Daily, February 22, 2008)

Beijing authorities yesterday launched "Seat-giving Day" to encourage people on public transport to give up their seats to those in greater need, in the latest bid to improve civic-consciousness ahead of the Olympics.
The city named the 22nd of every month as the day for commuters to give way to the aged, pregnant women, children, and the disabled on public transport.
Last February, the city designated the 11th of every month as "Queuing Day", when all city residents are encouraged to stand in line rather than jump queues.
Government departments and individuals also launched car-free days or follow-the-traffic-rule days earlier.
"Queuing Day has been welcomed by the people, and this latest move will further our efforts to improve public transportation," Liu Xiaoming, deputy chief of Beijing municipal committee of communications, said.
About 1.2 million promotional cards that say "Please offer your seat to those who need it more" will be distributed to commuters in Beijing today.
Liu's committee and the Beijing municipal transportation administration bureau (BMTAB) jointly launched the activity.
"The authorities have asked all bus companies to train conductors to persuade people to give up the seats," the BMTAB's Zhang Lei told China Daily yesterday.
The companies will also send out supervisors to check whether bus conductors are serving passengers in a polite way, he said.
More residents have been giving their seats on public transport to the elderly or disabled on buses, according to a report by the Renmin University of China commissioned by the capital ethic development committee and released on Feb 1.
"People tend to keep their seats when too many passengers crowd on to the bus or if they are traveling a long distance," Bai Meng, 25, who works in the Chinese capital, said.
She said she had noticed an improvement in people's behavior, with many of them willing to give up their seats if asked politely to do so by a conductor.
"We are Olympic hosts and should give visitors from home and abroad a good impression," Bai said.
"Pleased to be a gentleman on the bus," a passenger surnamed Zhang told China Daily yesterday that he had noticed some aged and disabled passengers did not want to get special attention on buses or subways.
"It is an interesting subject: How people can carry out good deeds in a sensitive way without offending the people they are trying to help," the Beijing resident said.

My thoughts:

After reading this article it seemed interesting that the Chinese have this notion that the international community is very civilized, and the Chinese must emulate them in order to be accepted. Last year I had the pleasure of visiting NYC, and I did not see anyone giving-up their seats for the elderly. This past Christmas I was visiting family in Hamburg, and once again, no German was jumping up to give-up their seat for a mother and child. At that time, we just dismissed it as “city folk mentality”, and I actually did not think about it until I read this article.

China is transforming economically, politically, and socially. If China can survive the failure of past economic hardships such as the Great Leap Forward (or Backwards as some might call it) and turn it around to double-digit economic growth, or go from a staunch communist regime to one allowing privatization of enterprises and capitalistic features, and now from “uncivilized” actions as spitting and pushing, to spit bags and standing in queues, it may not be far-fetched to see a crack-down in human rights and environmental policies. If these two policies are implemented, it would launch China as a true leader and genuinely win the hearts of the international community.

I can't complain about Atlantic Beach, NC anymore!

Just received these pictures from an email... not sure where in China they were taken, but they are sure fun to look at!

This Little Piggy Shortage (Newsweek article)

A new breed of criminal has emerged in China: "pigjackers." Soaring pork prices in the People's Republic have sent thieves roaring off with truckloads of hogs—and sometimes with smaller hauls, as was the case with the gang that was busted last year in Shenzhen trying to make off with 275 pounds of pork on a motorbike. A local newspaper valued the meat at upwards of $420, or roughly three times what a stolen motorbike might fetch in the city. Police easily caught the getaway bike; it couldn't handle all that weight.

The porcine crime wave is no joke to China's leaders. They see it as a sign of a much larger problem: even more than they worry about a repetition of Tiananmen Square, they dread the kind of mass unrest that could erupt out of a spike in pork prices. A full 65 percent of the country's total protein consumption is pork. The threat of a spontaneous uprising has been made worse by a freak blizzard that paralyzed central China last week—the region's worst in 50 years—stranding mobs of migrant workers on their way home for the Lunar New Year and disrupting shipments of the pig meat that is essential to holiday feasts. Food prices in general, and pork in particular, have been skyrocketing for months. Economic boom times are boosting demand even as the supply has plunged because of shrinking farmlands, rising grain prices and a "blue ear disease" epidemic that forced pig raisers to cull many thousands of hogs.

In an effort to head off serious trouble, Beijing has tapped the country's official "pork reserve." That's no joke, either; it's the actual term for the special stash of meat the Chinese government keeps frozen in case of a sudden crunch—not unlike America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But snowbound shipments of pork probably won't reach many Chinese families' tables in time for the holiday. And the country's underlying agricultural shortages will only get worse. The prospect is something for the whole world to worry about. Experts predict that China, long a major exporter of corn products, will soon become a net importer—possibly this year. When that happens, global grain prices could jump like this year's oil market.