In the process of disposal, destruction, incineration, and landfill, the potential damage of hazardous waste from the society to the environment is all the time huge and cannot be neglected.

Careful recycling and treatment of hazardous waste from the society, in other words, the turning of the waste into harmless materials or even useful materials, has become a difficult task for the government and the public in China. Both of them should strive to solve the problem as soon as possible.

Without the knowledge of how to deal with hazardous waste, many Chinese citizens just throw away hazardous waste such as used energy saving light bulbs, used mercury thermometers, and expired medicines, etc. as casually as they throw away other harmless daily household garbage. It is quite convenient for an individual to throw away the waste casually, but it has also brought potential harm to the environment –hazardous waste thrown away casually by the households or small-scale enterprises and institutions contains poisonous or corrosive chemicals that may leak when the waste is destroyed. Because of the long-term diffusion of rains and ground water, these chemicals ultimately contaminate the water and soil in the environment.

Moreover, hazardous waste mixed and treated together with the household waste is also very troublesome in the process of incineration. It may produce highly toxic dioxins and increase the amount of heavy metals in the ashes. With chlorides produced from incineration, the furnace also corrodes easily. In the process of disposal, destruction, incineration, and landfill, the potential damage of hazardous waste from the society to the environment is all the time huge and cannot be neglected.

Careful recycling and treatment of hazardous waste from the society, in other words, the turning of the waste into harmless materials or even useful materials, has become a difficult task for the government and the public in China. Both of them should strive to solve the problem as soon as possible.

In recent years, through the investigations we have carried out in cities in the Eastern, Northern, Middle, and Southwestern parts of China, we have found that the overall recycling and treatment of hazardous waste from the society in China is unsatisfactory.

To take one type of hazardous waste, the fluorescent lamps, as an example, the number of out-of-use fluorescent lamps amounts to about a hundred million, but the number of the lamps that are recycled and treated properly amounts to only several million. A large majority of these recycled lamps is from enterprises, and the number of recycled lamps from the society almost amounts to null. Another example is the lead-acid battery. In 2014, the output of lead-acid batteries is about 3.2 million tons; the amount of lead-acid batteries recycled and treated by the licensed enterprises is about 2720,000 tons, only accounting for 8.5% of the total amount of recycled and treated lead-acid batteries; and a large majority of out-of-use lead-acid batteries is recycled and treated in the small-scale unlicensed workshops.

The damage caused by hazardous waste to the environment is fearsome and astounding. However, there are still no specific regulations in China to deal with the recycling and treatment of most categories of hazardous waste. We think there are several reasons for it.

First, both the public and the government do not have a thorough understanding of the potential damage of hazardous waste from the society to the environment.

In our interviews with the governors, some of them observed that most used energy saving light bulbs and used mercury thermometers are from the households. In their opinion, these items of waste would not bring too much harm because they are scattered sparsely in the household garbage. “Such type of disposal will not affect the environment,” they said.

Due to the lack of propaganda and education, many citizens do not have a thorough understanding of the potential damage of hazardous waste to the environment. They also do not have the knowledge as to how to treat hazardous waste in a save way, so they just dispose the waste in the same way as they throw away the household garbage. Some citizens say, because the number of fluorescent lamps they throw away every time is very small, so they just mix them with other household garbage, and they have never thought of their harm to the environment.

Second, there are no specific regulations in China that state clearly who should be responsible for the issue; besides, there is no motivation system in the related regulations that have been issued.

Now there are no specific policies or regulations issued in China to command the recycling of hazardous waste from the society, and the responsibilities of the government, enterprises, and consumers are not clarified and stated clearly. Some manufactures even say that because the costs of recycling and treatment are too high they are not able to finish recycling without getting funds and supports from the government.

Quite the contrarily, there are specific regulations in the foreign countries that state clearly what responsibilities and obligations different groups involved in the recycling and treatment such as the government, enterprises, and consumers, etc. should assume. For instance, laws have been enacted in Germany in 2006 to require manufacturers to take the responsibility for the treatment of energy saving light bulbs. Besides, the Japanese government requires the citizens to put used energy saving light bulbs into plastic bags and to label the bags as “hazardous waste”. It also bans the citizens from mixing the energy saving light bulbs with other household garbage, and sets up specific recycling sites in the supermarkets or convenience stores.

Directory of National Hazardous Wastes came into force on August 1st, 2016 in China. It has given a more detailed statement of hazardous waste from the society. However, hazardous waste that is not categorized before recycling is granted entire exemption in the whole process, namely, waste recycling, transportation, and treatment, etc.; hazardous waste that is categorized before recycling is granted partial exemption in the process of recycling, and in the other processes such as transportation and treatment, etc. the waste should be dealt with carefully as stated in the directory. This regulation has made some “intelligent” departments in the government adopt time-saving and energy-saving policies of no intervention. The reason is that if they do not start categorizing or recycling the hazardous waste, they will be granted exemption and will not be punished, and if they start dealing with the hazardous waste, they should follow the abovementioned directory and hence they are bound to have responsibility for it.

Third, there is no innovative mode of recycling and the effective recycling system has not yet been established.

In the western part of China, especially in the remote mountain areas, there is still no treatment of hazardous waste from the society, and there are no management or methods of waste recycling and treatment either. In the big cities, there are recycling sites for hazardous waste in certain communities, yet without enough guidance and propaganda, few citizens have ideas of such sites. Some licensed enterprises that specialize in standard waste treatment have to face the unfair competition with the unlicensed workshops that recycle and destruct wastes illegally. These licensed enterprises have difficulty getting enough amount of hazardous waste from the society, in a fix of being “hungry” all the time. The present recycling mode has hindered the process of turning hazardous waste from the society into harmless materials and the process of reusing the resources, so the mode should be innovated and improved.

Note: The author is a professor in the School of Economics and Management at Tongji University and the deputy director of expert panel in China Technology Innovation Alliance of Renewable Resources. This article first appeared in Pudong Times on the following website: https://www.pdtimes.com.cn/html/2016-09/23/content_11_2.htm