Waste industry requires licence
By Qin Chuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-06-17 23:33

China will start to licence business related to hazardous waste on July 1.

Licensing should help the country better manage more than 3 million tons of dangerous garbage discharged by various industries each year.

Environmental officials say only about 24 per cent of the 10-million-ton industrial garbage produced in 2002 was effectively treated.

Regulations for the management of licensing were enacted by the State Council on May 30 and are to take effect on July 1.

By last October, 218 such licenses had been granted in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and three provinces, where the practice has been conducted since 1997 on a pilot basis.

Meanwhile, the 31 planned hazardous waste treatment centres across the country will all be operating by the end of next year. There are currently six such centres in use in the country.

In China, 40 per cent of industrial hazardous waste comes from the chemical industry.

Besides, daily life also generates large quantity of discarded batteries and lamp bulbs that generally contains dangerous metals such as nickel, mercury and lead.

The situation is serious in China in the term of hazardous waste management, Vice-Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration Pan Yue said Thursday.

From 1996 to 2002, the storage of dangerous industrial garbage amounted to more than 26 million tons, becoming a hidden environmental threat.

In addition, only a few cities treat medical waste collectively.

"During the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak last year, it was well exposed that the country lacks facilities to treat medical wastes well," Pan said.

And with a growing number of electronics and electrical products simply being abandoned as the nation becomes developed, the pressure will become more intense.

"If we fail to properly deal with abandoned electronics and electrical products, there will be serious damage to the environment," said Zhang Lijun, head of the administration's pollution control division.

Pan urged environmental watchdogs to approve and issue licences for those doing business that relates to hazardous waste and to strictly abide by the newly-enacted regulations.

Last June, government regulations on medical waste management came into effect.

Under the rules, obtaining a licence from environmental authorities is mandatory for medical waste-treating companies.

In another development, an application for the ratification the Stockholm Convention on POPs (persistent organic pollutants) has been submitted to the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature.

POPs are highly toxic chemical substances that persist in the environment and pose threats to human health and the environment.

China has already launched an effort to draft a national plan for implementing the convention.