Research On Environmental Impact Assessment Of China’s Plastic Pollution Control Policies

Plastic has become one of the most widely used materials in the world.Since the 1950s,the use of plastic has increased dramatically and is expected to double again in the next two decades.China is one of the countries with the largest plastic production and use in the world.Widespread consumption of plastics will bring severe challenges to the ecosystem.Since 1999,the China government has issued a series of policies to gradually strengthen the control of disposable plastic products.At the beginning of 14th Five-Year Plan period,China promulgated some comprehensive and complete plastic pollution control policies,planned a time line for the control of key plastic products,and formulated a task table.Policy environment impact assessment(Policy EIA)is a type of strategic environmental assessment,which aims to control the occurrence of environmental problems from policies.Because of the complexity and uncertainty of the evaluation subject,it is difficult for policy EIA to form a standardized evaluation process,which causes difficulties in actual operation.The policy EIA of the plastic pollution control policies promulgated by China can provide a theoretical reference for reducing plastic pollution,forming a closed-loop mode of material recycling,and formulating plastic pollution control policies in the future.This paper reviews China’s plastic pollution control policies and their effectiveness.Finding out the key products,policy objectives and implementation paths,and major stakeholders.By extensive collection and arrangement of data,this paper quantifies the usage of key products in the base years and their predicted values in 2025,and meanwhile calculating the product’s environmental footprint.Microplastic pollution in China is assessed by pollutant load method.Stakeholder views and social feedback on plastic control policies have been figured out by text theme analysis model.The results showed that:(1)The main targets of China’s plastic pollution control policies are disposable plastic products such as plastic bags,plastic tableware,express packaging and agricultural mulch.It is expected that in 2025,the usage of these four types of products will change by-0.21%,139.36%,195.80%and 19.41%respectively.Previous policies have shown effectiveness in controlling plastic bags.However,with the booming of take-out and express industries,plastic tableware and express packaging have generally become the focus and difficulty of current plastic pollution control.(2)Under the policy control scenario,the energy consumption,carbon emissions,and water consumption of the four types of plastic products production process in 2025 are 22.27%,12.02%and 1.37%higher than those in the zerosubstitution scenario;but the cumulative plastic pollution is reduced by 25.66%.(3)According to the ecological risk assessment results of micro-plastics,the abundance of microplastics in China’s soil and sediments is high,which shows as moderate to severe pollution level.In contrast,there is less risk of microplastic pollution in freshwater and oceans.(4)According to the results of the text analysis model,the problems existing in the implementation of China’s plastic pollution control policies are:high prices and low quality of degradable alternatives,contradictions between consumers’ environmental awareness and behavior,and lack of information on end-of-line treatment and recycling.Based on the results of evaluation and prediction,follow-up policy formulation should focus on developing a circular economy model,improving the reuse and recycling rate of plastic products;speeding up the removal of plastic waste that has entered the environment;advocating the public to develop green living habits and reduce single-use plastic products use;publicize information on terminal disposal and recycling and strive to achieve low-carbon and sustainable development of the plastics industry.