Advice Development and Reform Commission: Don't let "poisonous plastics" enter recycling

Once toxic plastic exists, its production, use, disposal, and regeneration process may continue to release toxic and harmful substances.

The National Development and Reform Commission's public solicitation of suggestions on "plastic waste pollution prevention and control" is coming to an end. As an environmentalist, I also have one last personal suggestion to submit to the NDRC, namely "strict control of plastic toxic chemicals" Add, strictly supervise the disposal of toxic plastics, prevent harmful substances from entering the recyclingplastics” .

There is no doubt that to solve the pollution of plastic waste, it is necessary to take measures to reduce the amount at the source, and to separate the recyclable waste plastics through garbage classification, and then process them to convert them into recycled plastics and Recycled plastic products.

However, if some plastic products are produced from "toxic plastics" from the beginning, then the recycled plastics converted from them are likely to be "toxic plastics", and the related products will be Still a "toxic product". Further down, if the whole process remains unchanged, "recycled toxic plastics" may also become "recycled toxic plastics" …

There are two root causes of the toxic plastic problem. One is that certain types of plastics are inherently toxic under certain conditions. Polyvinyl chloride is the most typical one. Although this artificial resin itself is non-toxic, its polymerization raw material, vinyl chloride monomer, is a known human carcinogen. Scientific research shows that not only some PVC plastic products will have a certain amount of vinyl chloride monomer residues, but also more vinyl chloride monomers will be released under certain physical and chemical conditions, such as the regeneration melting process.

The intentional addition of toxic chemicals is another reason for the existence of toxic plastics. In order for plastics to achieve specific properties and their products to perform specific functions, plastics manufacturers add various chemicals to virgin plastics as needed, including plasticizers, colorants, fillers, heat stabilizers, lubricants, and more. And many of these additives have quite high toxicity, such as bisphenol A, phthalates or phthalates, various brominated flame retardants, etc.

No matter what the reason is, once poisonous plastic exists, its production, use, disposal and regeneration process may continue to release toxic and harmful substances, resulting in environmental pollution and damage to people's health.

Last year, an international environmental agency released a report on the levels of toxic chemicals in children's plastics in several countries around the world, with worrying results. In all samples, a fairly high proportion can detect high concentrations of c-OctaBDE, decabromodiphenyl ether and hexabromocyclododecane - three of which have been listed under the key control of international conventions of persistent organic pollutants. However, according to expert analysis, these three chemicals are all brominated flame retardants, and should not be added to plastics according to the requirements of relevant product material standards. This shows that the raw materials used in these toys are likely to be waste plastics or recycled plastics that already contain brominated flame retardants.

What worries us even more is that in the above report, a high proportion of samples purchased in the Chinese market can also be included in the category of "poisonous toys" and "poisonous products". Plastic rain boots, plastic slippers, plastic yellow duck, etc.

It can be seen that an important part of the prevention and control of plastic waste pollution is to prevent the intentionally added toxic chemicals in plastics from entering new plastic products with the plastic recycling process, and to prevent plastics from producing new harmful chemicals during the processing and transformation process. substance.

To this end, when formulating an overall plastic waste pollution prevention and control policy, the National Development and Reform Commission should give priority to restricting the use of toxic chemical additives in plastics at the source, and at the same time require product quality departments and environmental protection departments to treat plastic products or waste plastic recycled products. Hazardous substances are systematically monitored. At the same time, it is necessary to study and introduce relevant technical standards for the harmless disposal of toxic plastics, so as to block the exposure of harmful substances to the maximum extent and make the plastic recycling industry truly clean.