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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Restaurants, e-commerce
platforms and delivery firms will be forced to report their utilization of
single-use plastics to the authorities and also submit formal recycling plans,
China's commerce ministry said in published proposals, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The
Ministry of Commerce said it had established a nationwide system for retailers
to report their plastic consumption as part of trial scheme to encourage
recycling. Plastic pollution has become one of China's biggest challenges, with
vast amounts buried in landfills or dumped in rivers. The rise in home food
deliveries has also caused volumes to surge.
In September, the ministry
said single-use plastic bags and eating utensils would be banned from major
cities by the end of the year, while single-use straws would be banned
nationwide. Wang Wang, chairman of the China Scrap Plastic Association, said the
bans would "only resolve the most visible types of plastic pollution" and were
just one part of the country's efforts to tackle waste.
From September,
China has also prohibited some types of agricultural-use plastic film used to
keep crops warm and moist. Chinese farmers use around 1.5 million tons a year,
but it leaves residues that damage the soil. A new "solid waste law" also came
into effect in September, raising fines tenfold for those who break rules and
mandating the construction of new recycling infrastructure.
Though there
have been complaints China is moving too fast, Wang said the business impact of
the measures would be limited, with firms aware in advance that some products
would be banned. China produced 63 million tons of plastic in 2019, with a
recycling rate of around 30%. It produces around 20 million tons of single-use
non-biodegradable material annually, including 3 million tons of shopping
bags.
Antoine Grange, chief executive for recycling at SUEZ Asia , said
the bans were welcome but China would also need to improve its entire recycling
capability. "The single-use plastic ban is good for education, good for
awareness, but it is only part of the big picture," he said.
We remind that
PetroChina has nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its
refinery in Dalian, the company's biggest, since January 2018, as a new supply
agreement had come into effect. The Dalian Petrochemical Corp, located in the
northeast port city of Dalian, was expected to process 13 million tonnes, or
260,000 bpd of Russian pipeline crude in 2018, up by about 85 to 90 percent from
the previous year's level. Dalian has the capacity to process about 410,000 bpd
of crude. The increase follows an agreement worked out between the Russian and
Chinese governments under which Russia's top oil producer Rosneft was to supply
30 million tonnes of ESPO Blend crude to PetroChina in 2018, or about 600,000
bpd. That would have represented an increase of 50 percent over 2017
volumes.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and
polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,594,510 tonnes in the first nine
months of 2020, up by 1% year on year. Only high density polyethylene (HDPE)
shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market
reached 880,130 tonnes in the nine months of 2020 (calculated using the formula:
production minus exports plus imports, exluding producers" inventories as of 1
January, 2020). Supply increased exclusively of PP random copolymer. |
