One of the world’s top polluters and largest plastic producers, China, is making an effort to decrease its impact by pledging to phase out single-use plastics by 2025.
On January 19, 2020, the Chinese government announced their plans to ban single-use plastics in the country and have given a deadline of 2025 to meet this goal.
The first step in this plan is to ban non-degradable plastic bags in places like supermarkets and shopping malls in major Chinese cities, as well as their food delivery services. Single-use, non-degradable plastic straws will also be banned by the end of 2020. These policies will extend to the rest of the country by 2022. The focus will be shifted to using biodegradable packaging.
The United Nations reports that 300 million tons of plastic waste is created yearly, 60% of which ends up dumped in either landfills or the natural environment. Single-use plastics have been identified as one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges. Degradation of these plastics take decades, meaning that they persist in the environment.
Picture: Pixabay
