1. Introduction 99
2. Causal Model 100
2.3 comparative discussions 100
3. Political-administrative Program (PAP) 104
3.1 Mainland China 105
3.2 Hong Kong 111
3.3 Comparisons between Mainland China and Hong Kong 115
4. Political-administrative Arrangement (PAA) 116
4.1 Mainland China 116
4.2 Hong Kong 116
4.3 Comparisons between Mainland China and Hong Kong 120
5. Action plan (AP) 121
5.1 Mainland China 121
5.3 Comparisons between Mainland China and Hong Kong 121
6. Outputs 123
6.1 Mainland China (Beijing) 123
6.2 Hong Kong 123
6.3 Comparisons between Mainland China and Hong Kong 123
7. Evaluative statement 126
7.3 Comparative discussion 127
8. Conclusion 129
9. References 131
The Policy Analysis of Waste Importation
The Comparative Study between China and Germany
Zhanyu Li
Yu Chen
Zhenhua Guo
Introduction
1.1 The choice of policies and countries
In 2007, the world traded more than 191 millions tons of waste.1 The annual physical weight of waste traded in international markets grew by 67% in five short years, from 114 millions tons in 2002 to 191 millions tons in 2007.2 Reports to the Basel Convention Secretariate on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal suggest that between 1993 and 2001 the amount of waste crisscrossing the globe increased from 2 million tons to more than 8.5 million tons.3 It should be noted that not all the countries report to the Basel Convention. Whether this international trade of waste may bring enormous economic benefits to the imported countries, it at the same time brings great environmental destruction to the imported countries, especially developing countries. To avoid this kind of risk of environmental pollution, the governments of different countries have made policies to regulate waste importation.4 The policy of waste importation is not only related to environment, but also to a series of other problems such as trade, resource.
As the economy develops dramatically, China has imported a large amount of solid waste every year. The reasons why China has imported such a large amount of waste are as follows: the domestic supply of raw materials is decreasing; the imported waste is of higher quality and at lower price than domestic collected waste; the environmental pollution of producing materials from waste is less that of directly exploiting the mineral stones.5 In 2011, the total amount of imported solid waste was more than 57 million tons, and the total output of imported solid waste valued at least 40 billion dollars.6
Source: The Annual Report of Inspection and Quarantine of the Imported Solid Waste Used As Raw Material, 2011.
According to the report issued by Basel Convention Secretariat, China is the world’s biggest importer of waste and secondary raw materials,7 imported solid waste nourish entire sectors of the local economy with the supply of scraps and disassembled materials in many cities of China. For example, in Xintang, a village in the province of Guangdong, there are more than 800 enterprises specialized in processing plastic waste, which consume about 1.8 million tons of plastic waste per year. 8 To better take advantage of the imported solid waste while protecting environment and ensuring the public health is a big challenge posed to China’s policy of waste importation. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the policy of China, both as a developing country and one of largest waste importers in the world.
On the other hand, Germany is both an importer and exporter of waste in Europe. According to the report issued by the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, in the period 2007-2009, the biggest "importer" of hazardous waste in Europe was Germany (with 2,7 Mt in 2009) followed by the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France and Sweden. Germany is also clearly in first position as regards the total quantity of hazardous and other notified waste shipped into EU’s Member States (with 7,6 Mt in 2009). 9
Figure: hazardous waste exported and imported by EU member states, 2009
Source: EEA Report: movements of waste across the EU’s internal and external borders, http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/movements-of-waste-EU-2012
Unlike China, the reasons behind Germany’s importation of waste not only lie in the demand of raw material, but also in the disposal and recovery capacities of its advanced green industry.10 Germany's unusually strict environmental regulations have ensured that the world's best hazardous waste incineration plants were built in Germany, which also has the greatest know-how. But the high-tech incinerators only make economic sense if they are used at or near full capacity. Germany's plant operators would face overcapacities of as much as 20 percent if they didn't process hazardous waste from abroad.11 Therefore, we choose to study the policy of waste importation in Germany, which is a developed country with advanced technologies of waste disposal and recovery.