From July 1 this year, a new batch of 8 kinds of solid wastes, including scrap iron and steel, copper scrap and aluminum scrap, will be transferred from non-restricted import to restricted import. At the end of June this year at the earliest, the first batch of scrap metal import license will be issued!

On May 29, the ministry of ecology and environment held a regular press conference in May. Liu youbin, spokesman of the ministry of ecology and environment, said: in late April this year, the provincial department of ecology and environment and relevant industry associations have informed relevant enterprises that they can submit the application for importing scrap metal to the local provincial department of ecology and environment from may. 

For applications that meet the licensing requirements, the ministry of ecology and environment will speed up the approval process and strive to issue the first batch of scrap metal import licenses in the second half of the year by the end of June.In recent years, the problem of imported "foreign garbage" continues to be banned in China. Some imported waste processing and utilization enterprises are small in scale and suffer from serious pollution. Some environmental violations, such as abnormal operation of pollution control facilities, are more prominent, increasing the environmental pollution load of regions and causing serious environmental pollution to some regions.According to liu youbin, China imported 3.43 million tons of solid waste in the first quarter of 2019, down 37.6 percent year-on-year, of which 2.715 million tons were imported as restricted solid waste, down 38.5 percent year-on-year. The ministry of ecology and environment has mainly carried out the following work:

      1.Actively promote the revision of the law on the prevention and control of environmental pollution by solid waste, and strive for the early revision of the law to provide a solid legal guarantee for the comprehensive prohibition of foreign garbage entry and the reform of solid waste import management system.

      2. Promote international conventions on plastic waste control. In May 2019, the conference of the parties to the Basel convention 14 actively proposed comprehensive control of the transboundary movement of plastic waste. With the persistence and efforts of my delegation, "parties may adopt stricter requirements" and "import of plastic waste may refer to the implementation of relevant international and national technical documents" are included in the annex to the convention, that is, each party has the right to determine whether or not to ban the import of such waste according to its own situation.

      3. Strengthen environmental supervision of solid waste processing and utilization enterprises. From May 15 to 24, the ministry will supervise and inspect the environmental violation of the processing and utilization enterprises of non-restricted solid waste, such as copper scrap, aluminum scrap and steel scrap, and refuse to accept the application of imported solid waste for enterprises that have been subject to administrative punishment for their environmental violation.

      4. Ensure the approval and issuance of import licenses in the second half of the year. In December last year, the ministry, together with relevant departments, adjusted the catalogue of imported waste management, transferring 8 kinds of solid waste, such as scrap iron and steel, scrap copper and scrap aluminum, from non-restricted import to restricted import, which will be implemented from July 1 this year.According to data from the ministry of ecology and environment, there are 139 waste metal "foreign waste" processing and utilization enterprises in zhejiang province, accounting for more than * in the whole country. The inspection found that 13 of the 139 enterprises in zhejiang province, which now have 119 factories, committed 20 environmental violations.

May 23, the ecological environment in zhejiang province to supervise and inspect the scrap metal processing enterprises to participate in the supervision and inspection of the working group, zhejiang province, said an official with the scrap metal, such as chopped chopped copper scrap, aluminum scrap, zinc scrap, etc.) "foreign garbage" import after the root cause of environmental pollution is the lack of raw material control, suggestion place actively guide enterprise * primary waste sorting and processing procedure in foreign countries, in a foreign country after sorting and semi-finished products to domestic imports.At the same time, we should give full play to the role of customs and quality inspection in pre-packing inspection and pre-entry inspection of imported wastes to ensure the environmental protection standards of imported raw materials.（From SCI99)