Circular economy
The attention in China for the circular economy (CE) has been growing steadily for several years. The amount of waste is growing rapidly and is increasingly complex in its composition. This creates vast new, growing waste flows.
One of the Chinese answers to this challenge is the commitment to the "Zero waste cities" pilot. In these pilot cities, the country is focusing on advanced waste processing and green and circular technologies.
Challenges and Opportunities
Sustainability has become an important policy issue for China in recent years. For example, in 2008 the country promulgated the Circular Economy Promotion Law. The Chinese Circular Economy Development Strategy was published in 2013. Both documents are an indication of China’s commitment to developing a circular economy.
Blueprint for waste disposal
Against this backdrop, the Zero-waste City Pilot was announced by the China State Council in 2019. This is a national plan with 11 pilot cities and 5 pilot districts. The main goal is to develop a blueprint for the approach to waste processing. This blueprint can then be applied to other Chinese cities to create a fan effect. The pilot will run until the end of 2020, but the plans of various cities will continue well beyond.
There is a clear overlap between Dutch expertise and Chinese goals, which are described in the Zero-Waste City Pilot. This plan emphasizes the processing and recycling of, among other things:
- household waste
- agricultural waste
- construction waste
- hazardous waste
Scale is a challenge
One of the challenges in China is the scale of the developments. On the one hand, this offers an enormous, promising sales market. On the other hand, it is precisely this scale that is difficult: the Chinese market is much larger than most European projects in the field of circular economy.
Waste is hardly recycled
China produces 1.8 billion tons of construction waste annually. Only 5-10% of this is recycled. Chinese households alone throw away 20-25 million tons of textiles per year, of which only 1% is recycled. This does not include the volume of industrial textiles, pre-consumer waste and unsold textiles. For plastics that is 60 million tons.
National and regional government organizations
On the government side, the circular economy is usually guided by 2 organizations: the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the relevant departments of the State Council. In doing so, they are often supported by technical associations. The largest is the China Association of Circular Economy, which was established in 2013.
There are a large number of regional associations under the national organization. In Shanghai, for example, there is the Shanghai Association of Circular Economy. The Guangdong Circular Economy Association is located in Guangdong province.
Zero-waste City Pilot market study
The Consulate General in Shanghai has conducted a market study. It looked at 3 cities participating in the Zero-waste City Pilot:
- Shaoxing (Zhejiang Province)
- Xuzhou (Jiangsu Province)
- Tongling (Anhui Province)
In the report you can read about the background of the pilot and in which (sub) sectors there are opportunities for Dutch companies. The report also examines the unique characteristics of the Chinese market.
If you are interested in receiving this market report, please reach out to the Dutch consulate-general in Shanghai: SHA-EA@minbuza.nl
