China has become the world's largest consumer of plastics, with current apparent consumption of about 120 million tons.  According to statistics, in 2018, China produced 67.78 million tons of waste plastics, and only 18.3 million tons were recycled, with a recycling rate of 27%. In addition to landfill and incineration treatment, 6.55 million tons of waste plastics were abandoned in various corners  

    According to statistics, China's annual consumption of disposable plastic products is about 15 million tons, about 9 million tons of plastic tableware, packaging bags and other disposable plastic products are difficult to recycle every year.  

    Since the 21st century, building a resource-recycling society and taking the road of sustainable development have become the hot spot and urgent task of the world.  Biodegradable plastics, as a supplement to non-degradable materials, has become a worldwide trend.  

    In 2019, the global degradable plastic production capacity totals about 1,077,000 tons, with starch-based plastics as the majority, according to CIIC.  In 2019, the capacity of starch-based plastics was 449,400 tons, accounting for 38.4% of the global capacity of degradable plastics, with the PLA and PBAT accounting for 25.0% and 24.1% respectively, ranking second and third.  

    Compared with foreign countries, domestic biodegradable plastics industry development is still in the early stage, the demand is still to be large.  There are three major catalytic factors in demand:  

1) Strengthen the legislation and law enforcement on plastic bag restriction;  

2) the improvement of the public awareness of environmental protection;  

3) Cost reduction due to technological progress or government subsidies.  In the early stage of industry development, policy promotion is the key.  

• This article is organized and published by the Secretariat of Degradable Plastics Committee of China Plastics Association