China biodegradable plastics 'failing to solve pollution crisis'

A massive increase in biodegradable plastic production in China is outpacing the country's ability to degrade the materials, according to a new report published by the charity Greenpeace.China - the world's largest producer of plastic waste - introduced bans earlier this year on several types of non-degradable single-use plastics, prompting manufacturers to ramp up production of biodegradable versions.According to Greenpeace, 36 companies in China have planned or built new biodegradable plastic manufacturing facilities, adding production capacity of more than 4.4 million tonnes per year - a more than sevenfold increase in less than 12 months.China's e-commerce industry is on track to generate an estimated 5 million tonnes of biodegradable plastic waste per year by 2025, when the country's single-use plastic bans come into effect nationwide, the charity said.'Staggering' levels of plastic pollution by 2040Reality Check: Where is the plastic waste mountain?Biodegradable plastics can be broken down by living organisms, but most require specific industrial treatment at high temperatures to be degraded within six months. Left in landfills under normal circumstances, the materials can take much longer to begin to break down and will still release carbon into the atmosphere."In the absence of controlled composting facilities, most biodegradable plastics end up in landfills, or worse, in rivers and the ocean," said Greenpeace's East Asia plastics researcher Dr Molly Zhongnan Jia."Switching from one type of plastic to another cannot solve the plastics pollution crisis that we're facing," she said.The BBC has attempted to contact China's ministry of ecology and environment for comment.IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGESimage captionAn worker carries a large bag of plastic bottles at a rubbish dump in ChinaChinese president Xi Jinping has in recent speeches stressed the importance of reducing plastic waste, but many major Chinese cities have little or no infrastructure in place to cope with the expansion of biodegradable plastics production.Plastic problemsOne of the main challenges with biodegradable plastics globally is that they cannot be put into ordinary household recycling or degraded in home composting bins - meaning consumers mostly don't have any route to get biodegradable packaging to the kinds of industrial facilities capable of processing it."Unless there is clear infrastructure for what we call 'end-of-life' - whether that's recycling or incineration or landfill or biodegradation in some way - then that is still a single-use plastic," said Dr Rachael Rothman, the co-director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield."Just because a plastic is biodegradable, that doesn't mean it is not single use," she said.