Managing Waste: China’s Green Fence and National Sword Policies

ENV320H5F Managing Our Waste Fall 2020
Mid-term (take-home) Test
Due: Friday 23 rd October, 12 noon
Name:
Student No.:

Question 1 (50 marks)
Describe the development of China’s ‘Green Fence’ and ‘National Sword’ policies and explain the
Reasons why it has decided to implement these actions. (max 1000 word)
China’s Green Fence Policy
The exporters of scrap metal, plastic, and other garbage are usually used to connect with a reliable freight forwarder to ship the waste to China. It was a general trend for the shippers to handle freight and Cargo for waste management with their destination as China. At present, if you get someone with reliable handling of Cargo to transport scraps to the well-known dumping ground, you might meet a challenge due to the recent import restrictions (Resource Recycling, 2018). Chinese waste management organizations have currently installed Green Fence Polity, which compulsorily bans consignment to the country encompassing post-consumer products (Jarvis, 2019). This policy has boosted a new trash management culture while severely affecting the global recycling industry. America’s landfill did not get the larger portion of scraps, but they used to ship the lion’s share of trash aluminum and plastics to China. For this, the US sent billions of dollars to China every year unless the Green Fence Policy became active in 2013 (Resource Recycling, 2018). Green Fence is recently officially installed, leaving the shippers scrambling with scrap metals and trash choices.
Although China’s Green Fence Policy is a practical action to environmental concerns, it has influenced the global trash exporters. The most affected post-consumer products include plastics and aluminum, while glass and paper are affected by this action. The recycling industry is panic to see many plastics becoming a part of incinerators and landfills contaminating the atmosphere due to unbearable haul away prices set by the policy.
China’s National Sword Policy
(Katz, 2019)
The term “national sword” implies to China’s recent measures to waste management by restrictions on certain imports. The country has banned various substantial trash through this policy while placing strict contamination bounds on recycling. In other words, China is not going to receive shipments, including post-consumer goods, a particular type of recyclable material, and substandard throwaways. They affirmed the restrictions in July 2017, which officially got activated in January 2018 as National Sword Police (Chen, 2009). Alongside, China has placed limits on shipping licenses, which leads to the least commerce in terms of waste management.
The world’s biggest waste center has always been no other country than China. They used to import recyclable material across the world and used it in the manufacturing of export goods. With the enactment of the National Sword Policy, the imports shrank a lot, causing significant deadlocks in the global recycling industry (Gregson&Crang, 2019; Cheung, 2009). Consequently, the recycling facilities are reduced to the worst in the US and various other countries like Canada.
National Sword Policy restricted imports while negatively impacting the recycling process. Most of the waste goes down the land for being excessive. Moreover, the import of trash and its processing into exportable goods has slowed down through this policy. From Green Fence to National Sword, China lost its status as the best dumping land in the world with a better environmental approach.
Reasons Why China has Implemented these Actions
China launched green bounds by frequent policy upgrades to restrict waste imports like Green Fence and National Sword. The reasons behind the implementation of these actions include energy and resource preservations, contamination decrease, and environmental protection, while the significant purposes are reduction in illegal activities and ecological concerns.
Restrictions on Illegal Activities
Chinese municipalities of the Customer declared the purpose of National Sword 2017 to set a check on illegal smuggling of a global throwaway. Most importantly, the tax-related waste products, weapons, drugs, agricultural goods, and resource goods were the Policy's target. China declared that above seventy percent of cases are connected to southern China. They recycled the waste to form products appearing as new. Furthermore, the Chinese police spotted 3,000 tons of trash, illegally recycled into plastics, to be used for kids' stuff. Most of the waste was from the medical industry and worth nearly £4.5 million (Landsberger, 2019; Sternfeld, 2017). Similarly, many other cases were arising concerning illegal recycling, leading to the National Sword activation.
Energy and Resource Prevention
China is known to be the globally biggest energy consumer. That is why they produced the most considerable quantity of coal and consumed it. The country also produced the most considerable quantity of carbon dioxide through waste management (Landsberger, 2019). The first half of 1900 marked China to be the largest manufacturers using coal. Hence, coal is the most critical energy and resources for them. The country is trying to energy and resource preservation following a well-organized scheme (Landsberger, 2019). The launch of policies like Green Fence and National Sword aim at coal prevention by the authorities and other important reasons like pollution reduction.
Ecological Concerns
China is the world’s second-largest economic power and began to rethink its investment plan to balance pollution and profitable activities. The government has noticed an urgent need to handle ecological contamination, particularly after the forest burn incident. This approach led the Chinese authorities to switch their economy onto a way of green evolution. The reason is to provide Chinese citizens with a better environment to breath and quality water to drink. The country began to feel responsible for maintaining its people's quality of life as one of the most powerful economies. Hence, garbage recycling and production of exports from trash imports become a considerable point for them. They began to realize measures to cut the pollution stemming up from all this process. The development of policies is not a sudden action. China’s Five-Year-Plan from 2016 to 2020 involved several meaningful actions in boosting green growth and restricting waste. For example, after setting up their plans in 2013 through the Green Fence Policy, China seemed to fight against ecological challenges powerfully. Soon, the country installed another component to support its plan with the National Sword Policy. Although it sent shockwaves to the global waste organizations, China is resolute in decreasing pollution to turn out to be successful in the plan (Recycling, 2018). No more dumping means no more pollution than looking at China's environmental concerns through enacting the policies.
References
Chen, G. (2009). Politics of China's Environmental Protection: Problems and Progress. World Scientific.
Gregson, N., & Crang, M. (2019). Made ...