85% of hazardous waste are not treated properly in China

Almaty. August 15. Silkroadnews – 85% of hazardous waste are not treated properly in China, Global Times reported.
“China’s hazardous waste treatment market is estimated to reach more than 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) by 2020 but the domestic hazardous waste treatment capacity is lagging far behind, with only 15 percent of hazardous waste being effectively treated at present, experts said”, the publication reads.
It is noted that China annually produces about 40 million tonnes of industrial hazardous waste, with a part of the wastes not treated properly resulting in long-term environmental risks.
As the publication explains, hazardous wastes include industrial, medical and some household waste.
According to the expert of the E20 environmental platform Pan Gong, only 15% of hazardous waste in China are treated properly, including landfill and incineration by companies that have the appropriate licenses.
“The other 85 percent of the hazardous waste is not treated properly and most of the waste is disposed of just like normal rubbish and stored in a normal way, which poses a great threat to the environment”, Pan Gong is quoted saying, having added that the actual amount of hazardous waste can reach 80 million to 100 million tonnes per year.
By 2015 the design capacity for treating hazardous waste was 5,263 tonnes. More than 2,000 licenses were provided to garbage processing plants and companies. However, the actual processing capacity was only 1536 tonnes, and more than 60% of the declared hazardous wastes were not treated properly.
“One reason for the waste treatment gap is that domestic waste treatment factories with licenses do not operate 24 hours a day, and some old equipment in these factories cannot reach the national standards, which is also why a large proportion of hazardous waste is not treated properly”, Pan told Global Times.
Statistics shows, 99% of hazardous waste processing enterprises are private enterprises in China, and the average processing capacity of all 2000 enterprises is only 20 000 tonnes. The top 10 waste recycling enterprises in China account for only 6.8% of the market share.