China published a wide-ranging guideline to phase out non-degradable plastic products, vowing to effectively curb plastic pollution in major cities in five years. In addition to setting timelines to ban or restrict single-use, non-degradable plastic products, the document also pledges to ramp up recycling and introduce preferential policies to promote green packaging and express delivery. The country is expected to significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste going to landfills and bring plastic pollution under effective control in major cities by 2025, according to the guideline.

The production and sale of disposable foam plastic tableware and plastic cotton swabs will be banned by the end of this year, according to the document, jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. The production of household chemicals containing plastic micro-beads will be prohibited by the end of this year, and the sale of such products will be barred two years later. Bans on the sale of other non-degradable plastic products will be rolled out in phases in different levels of cities and major plastic-consuming sectors. The use of non-degradable plastic bags, for example, is expected to be stopped in shopping malls, supermarkets and restaurant takeout services, first in metropolises by the end of this year and then in all major Chinese cities and all urban areas in coastal regions by the end of 2022. A complete ban is expected by the end of 2025.

“The ban will not be imposed all of a sudden, but phase by phase. The current production capacity for substitute products in China will not fail to meet the market gap caused by the ban,” said Weng Yunxuan, Secretary General of the China Plastic Processing Industry Association’s Degradable Plastic Committee and Professor at the Beijing Technology and Business University. Jilin province has led the way in the country in promoting biodegradable plastic shopping bags, and some supermarkets and e-commerce platforms, such as JD.com, have been using the environmentally-friendly bags for a while, the China Daily reports.