On September 8, 2022, China's State Council released a notice (hereinafter the Notice), announcing to further strengthen the governance of excessive packages for commodities. The Notice pointed out that all the involved departments should fully understand the importance and urgency of this task. Departments shall clarify and detail requirements to manage excessive packaging through the whole supply chain, covering production, sales, delivery and recycling stages. Commodities like health food, edible agricultural foods, takeaway food, and express parcels are underlined. The implementation of this Notice is expected to provide strong support for China’s transformation to green production and green life.
To be specific, the Notice puts forward an objective which lasts until the end of 2025, to generally build a whole-chain governance system for restricting the excessive packaging of commodities, advance relevant legislation system, improve governance capacity, and curb the excessive packaging for key targeted commodities like tea and mooncake. To achieve the objective, the Notice proposes 11 measures in three aspects and designates responsible authorities for each measure. The major content is as below.
No. | Measures | Major steps | Major responsible authorities |
A) Fortifying the whole-chain governance on excessive packaging | |||
1 | Strengthening technological innovation in packaging | Propelling packaging enterprises to provide packaging solutions, which should be reasonable in design, material-saving, convenient in recycling, and affordable. | Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and local governments |
2 | Preventing the production of excessive packaging for commodities |
| MIIT, State Administration and Market Regulation (SAMR), and local governments |
3 | Avoiding the sales of overpackaged commodities |
| Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), SAMR, and local governments |
4 | Boosting the reduction of packaging in the delivery stage of commodities |
| State Post Bureau (SPB), SAMR, MOFCOM, MIIT, and local governments |
5 | Intensifying the recycling and disposal of packaging waste |
| MOFCOM, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), and local governments |
B) Reinforcing supervision and law enforcement capacity | |||
6 | Enhancing industry management |
| MIIT, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MOARA), MOFCOM, SAMR, SPB, etc. |
7 | Intensifying market supervision and law enforcement |
| SAMR, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), SPB, and local governments |
C) Bettering the support and guarantee system | |||
8 | Completing laws and regulations |
| NDRC, Ministry of Justice (MOJ), SPB, and local governments |
9 | Perfecting the standard system |
| SAMR, MOARA, MIIT, SPB and MOFCOM |
10 | Increasing policy support |
| NDRC, Ministry of Finance (MOF), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and local governments |
11 | Enhancing industry self-discipline |
| MIIT, relevant industry associations, etc. |
To better implement the 11 measures above, involved departments shall coordinate with each other and communicate about the progress timely. Local governments at all levels will be the major responsible bodies for the governance of excessive packaging. They can further research and formulate specialized policies during the practice. In addition, authorities will educate the public about regulations restricting excessive packaging via newspapers, TV, and other media.