Overpacking causes reflection

Excessive packaging can waste resources and damage the environment. The rapid economic development has led to an increasing share of packaging materials in domestic waste. Effective control and reduction of packaging waste is very important for reducing the amount of solid waste produced.

According to the survey, of the more than 600 cities in the country, more than 200 were surrounded by various types of garbage. The main reason for this was excessive packaging. At present, 30% of the volume of municipal solid waste is composed of various kinds of packaging.

After the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Valentine's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival and other festivals were over, each home began to organize new items and gifts. A large number of plastic, paper, rattan, and metal boxes were thrown away as rubbish, and the rubbish was beautiful. This luxury packaging is also found everywhere in daily life, and most of the packaging contains raw materials that are difficult to handle and is not conducive to environmental protection. These “beautiful rubbish” are a waste of resources, as well as ecological and environmental pollution.

The "Solid Waste Pollution Prevention and Control Law" clearly stipulates: "The State Council department in charge of standardization shall organize and formulate relevant standards in accordance with national economic and technological conditions, the state of prevention and control of solid waste pollution and the technical requirements of products, and prevent excessive packaging from causing environmental pollution."

The law also stipulates that enterprises that produce, sell, or import products and packaging that are legally listed in the compulsory recycling catalog must be recycled according to the relevant national regulations.

The law makes it clear that the State encourages scientific research and production units to research and manufacture thin film coverings and commodity packaging that are easy to recycle, easy to handle, or that can be degraded in the environment. International experience data indicates that packaging cannot exceed 13% to 15% of the value of the product itself. Therefore, market thresholds and relevant standards should be established to limit excessive packaging in terms of value ratio, weight ratio, and volume ratio.

According to the experience of developed countries, there are three main types of control over packaging:

The first type is standard control, which sets limits on the volume of the package, the gap between the package and the product, the number of packages, the ratio of the package cost to the value of the product, and so on. Such as South Korea, Japan, Canada and other countries;

The second category is the control of economic measures, such as the collection of packaging taxes on non-paper-based packaging and on packaging that does not meet the recycling requirements, such as Belgium; through waste metering and charging, directing consumers to choose simple packaging, such as the Netherlands;

The third category is to increase the producer's responsibility and stipulate that the producer of goods is responsible for the recovery of the packaging of goods. Usually, a deposit system can be used to entrust relevant commercial organizations to recycle the packaging.

In order to facilitate recycling, producers will actively choose to use less material and easy to recycle packaging design, such as Germany, France and other countries.