—An Interview with Zheng Kai, Chairman of China Synthetic Resin Association

【CCN】 The new versioned Plastics Restriction Order has been effective for one year by 2021, and the plastics recycling has been paid attention to for the past year. What problems do you think are still there and how should we promote the plastic recycling?

【Zheng Kai】 The world's major economies all take the development of circular economy as the approach to break through the resources constraints, deal with the climate change, and develop new economic growth points. In China, the management of plastic pollution and green development has become the core of industry reform and plastics utilization enhancement. However, by taking a good look, we may find that the pollution is caused by unreasonable use of resources. We have paid excessive attention to the pollution prevention instead of rational use of resources. Therefore, President Xi proposed "to take advantage of resources utilization, promote the total management, scientific allocation, comprehensive conservation, recycling, and hence improve the overall efficiency of resource utilization". He emphasized that "high-quality development and efficient use of resources is the key to solving environmental problems".

We firmly believe that the plastics pollution was caused by humans’ inappropriate use and management. The first thing to do to solve the plastics pollution problem is to make plastics more recyclable and guarantee the recycling path smooth, thereby minimizing the environment leakage. It turns out that the "end treatment" is not cost effective. The problem will not be solved unless we strictly follow the source prevention, the process control and the end management at the same time.

【CCN】 What are challenges for China’s recycling resin companies and how should they cope with these challenges?

【Zheng Kai】 The plastics recycling industry will not have enough closed-loop drive without a recycling market and application, especially facing new materials’ low cost and recycling plastics’ weak competitiveness. It is thus necessary to implement encouraging or even compulsory policies to construct a system requiring the usage of recycling plastics proportionally. Using policy guidance and the market rules to promote the recovery and recycling of plastics not only provides institutional guarantees, but also implements specific measures step by step, and will ultimately solve the problem of plastic pollution. The UK, Italy and the US, for instance, are all going to impose packaging taxes in 2022, being GBP 200 per ton or Euro 400 per ton or US$450 per ton on the sale of packaging materials (plastics). The taxes may be waived if 30% of recycled materials are applied to the production of the plastics. These measures are carried out to ensure that recycled materials can be accepted by the market, and recycled plastics can be used in the normal processing process.   

Therefore, the proportional usage of recycled materials is a governance measure to achieve sustainable, which is market-oriented, low-cost, customized, effective, and in line with the laws of economic and social development. We appeal to construct a complete management system as soon as possible (including the minimum usage requirement and enterprises’ commitment on the amount of usage), as well as laws and regulations on the certification and evaluation of recycled materials and data traceability. The strengthened monitoring through industry management departments and market supervision departments may fully promote the application of recycled materials and balance the supply and demand.

The traceability process and certification system of waste plastics and the authenticity and reliability of statistics are prerequisites and guarantees for the safety of plastic recycling. Without the accurate data, it will be difficult to make the right decisions on recycled materials. I hope that the state can establish relevant statistics and standards system as soon as possible, as well as the designated management and certification bodies. Otherwise, the situation will be like before: enterprises using illegal means to process for profits without being punished, the society being harmed, and the bad money driving out the good. Such chaos is not stopped, and the plastic recycling market will not be able to develop healthily.

As for the technology, physical recycling is the most direct, economical and efficient one, with the least energy and resource consumption. However, a closed-loop cycle will not be achieved until the chemical recycling is implemented, which should be promoted largely, especially for the wastes that have been physically recycled several times. 

【CCN】 What will be the new trends of plastic recycling in the future, and how will they influence the synthetic resin industry?

【Zheng Kai】 The future trends will be from an open-loop linear model to a closed-loop circular model in all sectors of resin synthesis, plastics modification, plastic products, brands, distributions and end consumption. The closed-loop system will have a highly efficient resource utilization, linking raw materials, production, consumption, and recycling altogether. The reusability of plastic products should also be improved to realize a development with reduction in resource consumption. 

The plastics industry should include the material performance, produce design and product processing into the sustainable development in the future. Instead of providing materials to the market, the future needs us to be adaptable to the environment demands. The industry’s tasks are to give full play to plastics’ performance advantages to serve the humans and to restrict or eliminate plastics’ impact on our sustainable development. 

【CCN】 What are your Association’s measures promoting plastics recycling in 2021? 

【Zheng Kai】 In 2021, the Association did the following work in promoting the plastics recycling.  

We vigorously promoted the construction of laws and regulations and standards regarding the industry, carried out specific planning and implementation of the safeguard measures involved in the development of circular economy, and ensured that such development was legalized, standardized and market oriented. 

In the next few years, the Association will unite a number of representative enterprises to jointly establish green group standards and labels, help government departments and parks to build up and improve the quality and safety risk management system for recycling and remanufacturing; apply for national standards and hire certification bodies; use group standards and national standards as the basis for product testing and certification, and create a number of environmental friendly intelligent closed-loop benchmark enterprises and demonstration parks for recycling industry. 

(Note:China Chemical News (CCN) is the Sister magazine of CCR. It is a comprehensive chemical journal in Chinese and also belongs to CNCIC. )