More than 10 billion tons of solid waste will be added every year for comprehensive utilization
Many places are accelerating the layout of large-scale solid waste comprehensive utilization projects, carrying out pilot projects of solid waste comprehensive utilization, and building a "waste-free city". The First Financial Reporter combed the recent local "two sessions" and related policy trends, and found that the comprehensive management of solid waste will be strengthened this year, and the source reduction and resource utilization of solid waste will be promoted to make solid waste "turn waste into treasure".
In fact, there has been clear support for the comprehensive utilization of solid waste at the policy level. For example, the Guiding Opinions on Comprehensive Utilization of Bulk Solid Wastes in the Tenth Five-Year Plan jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and other 10 departments proposes to promote the green, efficient, high-quality, high-value and large-scale utilization of bulk solid wastes and improve the comprehensive utilization level of bulk solid wastes.
For another example, the "Implementation Plan on Accelerating the Comprehensive Utilization of Industrial Resources" jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other eight departments also proposes to promote the reduction of industrial solid waste sources in key industries and the large-scale and efficient comprehensive utilization, accelerate the high-value recycling of renewable resources, and promote the coordinated utilization of industrial resources. Promote the overall green transformation of economic and social development.
Statistics show that in 2023, 113 cities at or above the prefecture level and 8 special regions issued the implementation plan of "No Waste City", and more than 3,200 projects were arranged in various places, involving a total investment of over 1 trillion yuan. 15 provinces have promoted the construction of "waste-free cities" in an orderly manner.
At the recent "2023 Summit on Environmental Pollution Prevention and Resource Utilization of Solid Waste", relevant experts introduced that at present, the situation of solid waste pollution prevention and control in China is not optimistic. The goal of the "Thirteenth Five-Year" national ecological environmental protection plan has been determined that by 2020, the comprehensive utilization rate of industrial solid waste in China will increase to 73%. But in fact, the comprehensive utilization rate of bulk solid waste in China was only 55% in 2019, and it will only rise to 57.8% in 2021.
At present, the output of general industrial solid waste, hazardous waste, construction waste, electronic waste and agricultural solid waste in China is still huge. It produces about 3 billion tons of industrial solid waste (reaching 4.1 billion tons in 2022), nearly 4 billion tons of livestock and poultry breeding waste, about 1 billion tons of main crop straw, about 2 billion tons of construction waste and about 200 million tons of domestic waste every year. In 2022, the output of hazardous waste exceeded 100 million tons. Altogether, the country generates more than 10 billion tons of solid waste every year, and the total historical storage is as high as 60 billion to 70 billion tons, covering an area of more than 2 million hectares.
According to experts, due to the long-standing problems such as weak hazardous waste management, insufficient hazardous waste treatment capacity and lax supervision and law enforcement in some areas, as well as the high price of hazardous waste disposal, the hidden dangers of environmental risks are very prominent, and environmental pollution incidents such as illegal dumping and disposal of solid waste have occurred in many places, and there are also many sudden environmental incidents caused by tailings ponds. From 2020 to 2021, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, together with the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security, launched a special campaign to severely crack down on environmental crimes of hazardous wastes, and investigated and dealt with 11,132 cases of environmental violations of hazardous wastes, fined 886 million yuan and transferred 1,794 cases to public security organs.
"Solid waste is also a frequent area of environmental administrative punishment and major environmental emergencies. Nearly 20% of the national environmental administrative punishment involves solid waste. " The above experts said.
At the 2024 National Conference on Eco-environmental Protection held recently, Minister of Eco-environment Huang Runqiu said in his work report that this year "the management of solid waste and new pollutants will be strengthened". Promote the construction of "waste-free cities" with high standards and create a number of benchmarks for the construction of "waste-free cities". We will deepen the results of a comprehensive ban on the entry of "foreign garbage", promote the recycling of bulk solid waste, and intensify the whole chain control of plastic pollution.
In addition, the meeting proposed to strengthen the management of solid waste and new pollutants. Deepen the reform of hazardous waste supervision, utilization and disposal capacity, accelerate the construction of "1+6+20" major projects of hazardous waste (building national and six regional hazardous waste risk prevention and control technology centers and 20 regional special hazardous waste centralized disposal centers), and optimize the pilot project of inter-provincial transfer management of waste lead batteries. Continue to implement heavy metal emission reduction projects. Promote key provinces to carry out in-depth investigation and management of hidden dangers of thallium pollution. Establish and improve the investigation and management of hidden dangers of tailings pollution and the environmental supervision system of tailings classification and grading. Focusing on tailings and associated minerals, coal gangue, fly ash, construction waste, etc., 100 demonstrations of comprehensive utilization of bulk solid waste were carried out.