Managing Waste: China’s Green Fence and National Sword Policies

ENV320H5F Managing Our Waste Fall 2020
Mid-term (take-home) Test
Due: Friday 23 rd October, 12 noon
Name:
Student No.:

Question 1 (50 marks)
Describe the development of China’s ‘Green Fence’ and ‘National Sword’ policies and explain the
Reasons why it has decided to implement these actions. (max 1000 word)
China’s Green Fence Policy
The exporters of scrap metal, plastic, and other garbage are usually used to connect with a reliable freight forwarder to ship the waste to China. It was a general trend for the shippers to handle freight and Cargo for waste management with their destination as China. At present, if you get someone with reliable handling of Cargo to transport scraps to the well-known dumping ground, you might meet a challenge due to the recent import restrictions (Resource Recycling, 2018). Chinese waste management organizations have currently installed Green Fence Polity, which compulsorily bans consignment to the country encompassing post-consumer products (Jarvis, 2019). This policy has boosted a new trash management culture while severely affecting the global recycling industry. America’s landfill did not get the larger portion of scraps, but they used to ship the lion’s share of trash aluminum and plastics to China. For this, the US sent billions of dollars to China every year unless the Green Fence Policy became active in 2013 (Resource Recycling, 2018). Green Fence is recently officially installed, leaving the shippers scrambling with scrap metals and trash choices.
Although China’s Green Fence Policy is a practical action to environmental concerns, it has influenced the global trash exporters. The most affected post-consumer products include plastics and aluminum, while glass and paper are affected by this action. The recycling industry is panic to see many plastics becoming a part of incinerators and landfills contaminating the atmosphere due to unbearable haul away prices set by the policy.
China’s National Sword Policy
(Katz, 2019)
The term “national sword” implies to China’s recent measures to waste management by restrictions on certain imports. The country has banned various substantial trash through this policy while placing strict contamination bounds on recycling. In other words, China is not going to receive shipments, including post-consumer goods, a particular type of recyclable material, and substandard throwaways. They affirmed the restrictions in July 2017, which officially got activated in January 2018 as National Sword Police (Chen, 2009). Alongside, China has placed limits on shipping licenses, which leads to the least commerce in terms of waste management.
The world’s biggest waste center has always been no other country than China. They used to import recyclable material across the world and used it in the manufacturing of export goods. With the enactment of the National Sword Policy, the imports shrank a lot, causing significant deadlocks in the global recycling industry (Gregson&Crang, 2019; Cheung, 2009). Consequently, the recycling facilities are reduced to the worst in the US and various other countries like Canada.
National Sword Policy restr...