SEPA closely monitoring British shipments of garbage to China
23/1/2007 17:03
An official with the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA)
of China yesterday said the SEPA is closely monitoring British shipments of
garbage to the country.
Lianjiao, a remote village in Foshan city, south
China's Guangdong province, was unknown to the world until it was fingered for
its trash business -- importing garbage from the UK.
Britain's Sky News TV
recently screened a program titled "Are you poisoning China?", revealing how UK
plastic waste was ending up in Lianjiao.
Picking up on overseas reports,
Chinese media have pointed out that while China exports 16 billion pounds of
commodities to the United Kingdom each year, the UK sends back 1.9 million tons
of rubbish.
The SEPA official said Lianjiao village -- attached to the Nanhai
District industrial zone of Foshan city -- is a major domestic plastic waste
collecting and processing region that has existed since the 1970s.
Lianjiao
village processes 200,000 tons of plastic waste every year -- 80 percent from
other parts of China, but the rest imported from other countries, sometimes
suspiciously, the official said.
"Some banned types of plastic waste have
been found in Lianjiao village," said the official.
No company in Lianjiao
Village has state approval to import waste from other countries, according to
the investigation by environmental authorities.
The official said media had
exposed illegal rubbish imports to Lianjiao as early as September 2006. At that
time, the Guangdong Provincial Government urged the Foshan Municipal Government
and Guangdong Provincial Environmental Protection authorities to investigate and
deal with the case.
The local government has banned unlicensed enterprises
and individuals that engage in plastic waste business, suspended plastic waste
processing factories that are not equipped with environmental protection
facilities and seriously dealt with enterprises which incinerate trash or
illegally occupy public venues to store waste.
The Chinese government bans
the import of solid waste which cannot be used as raw material. Imported solid
waste which can be used as raw material must be registered.
Xinhua
|
