From January to March, only 44.4% of the days in 74 surveyed cities met the nation’s air quality limit, while 55.6% of the days were polluted. About 13% of those days was heavily polluted and 5.8% was found with severe pollution – the worst two levels in a six-tier scale in China. Tangshan city ranked top for the worst-affected city. Among the 10 cities with the poorest air quality, six, including Tangshan, were in Hebei province, which neighbors Beijing. The capital, which hit the headlines for serious haze problems in January, ranked No 17 in the list of most polluted cities. Its ranking improved from 9th in January to 17th in March. Beijing is surrounded by seven of the 10 most polluted cities – including Shijiazhuang, Xingtai and Baoding – in neighboring Hebei province. Rounding out the top 10 were Jinan in Shandong, Xian in Shaanxi and Urumqi in Xinjiang. Haikou in Hainan province had the best air quality, followed by Lhasa in Tibet and Zhoushan in Zhejiang. Shanghai was No 52 in the ranking of most polluted cities. The average density of PM2.5 of the 74 cities in the first quarter was 96 micrograms per cubic meter, and the highest daily record was 772 micrograms per cubic meter – 9.3 times the nation’s limit of 75 micrograms per cubic meter. The air quality of 47 major cities were measured by using the air quality index (AQI), a composite index of PM10, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, PM2.5, ozone and carbon monoxide levels.

SITA Waste Asia, a unit of Suez Environnement, and Beijing Enterprise Environmental Group, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-listed Beijing Enterprises Holdings, signed a joint venture agreement to work together on the operation and management of waste facilities. The joint venture will offer services to the existing waste treatment facilities of Beijing Enterprise as well as new projects. “We believe that in the long term, our international experience and expertise in the entire waste management cycle, combined with the local knowledge of Beijing Enterprises, will help to enhance the capabilities of waste facilities and overcome critical environmental challenges in China,” said Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO of Suez Environnement. The initial contract is only to provide operation and maintenance services but could later be extended to the building of new waste treatment facilities. Experts say there has been very little progress made in recycling and sorting China’s garbage, coupled with the fact that there is less available space for landfills. A report from China International Engineering Consulting Corp, said that about a third of China’s 700 landfills will reach capacity by the end of 2015. China aims to treat 35% of its garbage through waste-to-energy technology by the end of 2015, up from 20% at present.

The end of a 14-year ban on the sale and use of disposable food containers made of plastic foam has sparked concerns over pollution and potential health risks.The time was right for the ban to end, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said, as plastic foam could now be recycled to become raw materials in construction, paints and stationery. A decision to ban plastic foam dinnerware was imposed in 1999 over environmental pollution concerns. However, the lifting of the ban has not met with universal approval. Dong Jinshi, Deputy General Secretary of the Beijing Society for Environmental Sciences, said a recycling system had not yet been established and it was more dangerous to use such products today as many companies were using waste plastic to make dinnerware. “There are no authorities supervising the issue, and there is a legal vacuum,” Dong said. Despite the ban, dinnerware made of plastic foam was still widely used in restaurants, particularly by street vendors and at small eateries, because it was so cheap to produce. Li Peisheng, Director of China’s Plastic Dinnerware Office, said the cost of disposable dinnerware made of plastic foam was half that of the cheapest disposable dinnerware previously allowed, and it performed better in resisting water and oil and in keeping food warm.

More than 1,000 people gathered in the center of Kunming, Yunnan province, early this month to oppose plans to build a petrochemical plant in the satellite city of Anning. China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the nation’s largest oil producer, plans to build the refinery to process more than 10 million tons of crude oil a year. Authorities said the project was still at the planning stage. The project owner, the Yunnan-based Yuntianhua Group, said the project, with an estimated budget of CNY7.6 billion, is designed with an annual production capacity of 650,000 tons of PX and 1 million tons of purified terephthalic acid, which is used to make clothing and plastic bottles. The Group has already drafted a relocation plan for residents living near the industrial zone in Anning. Though some experts argued that the chemical is not as dangerous as many people believe, PX has been an extremely sensitive term since 2007, when residents in Xiamen, Fujian, successfully stalled a related project in the city. Since then, plans involving PX have led to large-scale public protests in several cities, including Dalian in Liaoning and Ningbo, Zhejiang. Another protest is planned in Kunming on May 16. The refinery will emit 2,500 tons of poisonous sulfur dioxide and 1,270 tons of nitrogen oxides each year, said Zhou Dongfeng, Senior Engineer at the Yunnan Institute of Environmental Sciences. He also said the factory will discharge 147 cubic meters of wastewater per hour, or 1.29 million tons a year. Ma Xiaojia, Director of the Yunnan Provincial Energy Bureau, said the 9.5 million tons of refined oil Yunnan consumed in 2012 was all imported from other regions and the price was higher than in other regions due to long-distance transportation. The project is expected to be completed in 2015 to produce 3.3 million tons of gasoline, 5.9 million tons of diesel, and 1 million tons of aviation kerosene annually. The refinery is expected to supply 53% of oil consumption in Yunnan, which will be 14 million tons in 2015.

A similar protest in Chengdu against another PX plant was thwarted by police holding an earthquake drill.

Shanghai is launching a long and ambitious campaign to clean up land around former industrial and chemical sites this year to clean up any toxic materials that might remain in the soil. Wu Qizhou, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau, said the city government will enforce a new regulation by the end of the year to launch the evaluation and cleanup process. “The work is essential and urgent because soil pollution can endanger public health and the environment, especially near water sources and farmlands,” Wu said. All the former locations of chemical plants and factories that made toxic products and waste storage and processing sites may still be contaminated by heavy metals like chromium, cadmium, lead, mercury and arsenic, as well as dangerous organic substances like benzene. With economic restructuring, many factories and industrial zones were relocated, but the soil remained polluted. Companies which were once located in the area would have to pay for the evaluation and cleanup along with the future developers of the land. The bureau will also set up a database for areas where the soil may be polluted but new buildings had been erected. Tests on the soils will be held after the buildings are demolished again and the lands are put into other uses. The dumping of batteries and used cell phones, and extensive use of herbicide and insecticide as well as fertilizers also pollute farmland.