The "blind area" of rural environmental management needs to be destroyed

June 5th is World Environment Day. This year's international theme is "quick fix," and it calls on the whole world to fight with one-off plastic pollution. “In China, more than 10 billion pesticide packaging wastes are produced each year. Due to the lack of effective management measures, they are basically not recovered and are discarded at random in the fields and ditches.” Researcher at Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environment In an interview with a reporter from the Science and Technology Daily, the military said that pesticides are mostly plastic bottles and aluminum foil bags that are difficult to degrade and will remain in the environment for a long time after being discarded. This poses a huge environmental risk and is currently a “blind zone” in rural environmental management.

Pesticide packaging waste contaminates soil and water bodies

On June 5th, at the seminar on pesticide packaging and recycling held in Longyou County, Zhejiang Province, Shan Zhengjun said, “You go to farms in different places and you can see large and small pesticide packaging waste anytime and anywhere. The discarding of packaging not only causes serious "visual pollution", but the residual pesticides will directly harm the soil and water in rural areas, affect agricultural production, and may also enter drinking water sources, thus threatening the health of residents.

“Pesticide residues in the packaging of waste pesticides can also lead to animal poisoning, fish and shrimp deaths, and children accidentally playing with accidental meals.” Shan Zhengjun said that although the pollution of pesticide packaging waste has caused the attention of relevant departments, it has also become a representative of the two National Associations. Members have proposed and proposed important contents of the proposal, but at present there are only a few places in China that carry out recycling operations.

Who will build the recycling system? Is it hazardous?

Where is the difficulty in recycling? Shan Zhengjun explained that first, the establishment of a recycling system, and second, whether pesticide packaging waste should be categorized as hazardous waste is still controversial.

According to statistics, there are currently more than 2,000 pesticide manufacturers in China, most of which are small pesticide plants. The economic benefits are poor, and it is difficult to pay for recycling; there are more than 30,000 kinds of pesticide registration products, and the packaging specifications and materials are not the same. Aluminum foil packaging About 60%, low resource utilization.

At present, in the government-led recovery and disposal mode piloted in Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang, the recovery and disposal costs are all funded by government fiscal funds. Due to the large scale of agriculture and the high total amount of pesticide packaging waste, there are problems such as large financial pressure and difficulty in sustaining.

Zhang Chenguang, director of Longyou County Plant Protection and Quarantine Station, said that the recycling of pesticide packaging waste will result in a total budget of 2.40 million for Longyou County in 2017, and a total of 100 tons will be recycled in three years. The recycling price is 1.5 yuan/kg for pesticide glass bottles, 4 yuan/kg for plastic bottles, and 8 yuan/kg for tin foil bags. “Our recycling price is higher than ordinary household waste, and some people take the form of ordinary waste plastics, glass, etc.; Zhejiang does not issue uniform recycling prices. Some people have recovered from Longyou and sold them to relatively high-priced places, or even hoarded. The resulting secondary pollution also led to market confusion and upset the normal operation of rural environmental management."

According to reports, pesticide packaging waste is currently treated as hazardous waste. The disposal cost is higher than 4,500 yuan per ton, while ordinary waste disposal is only a few hundred yuan or tens of yuan per ton. Local financial pressure is huge.

Should develop an easy-to-use, biodegradable new packaging

"We should establish a government-led, sustainable recovery and disposal model for enterprises." Shan Zhengjun said that such as Dow DuPont, Guangxi Kemik, etc. have taken action, through dealers, agricultural resources and other channels to recover. However, at present, "the proportion of corporate recycling processing in the total amount of pesticide packaging waste in the country is still very low."

The state should encourage pesticide producers to use disposable packaging that is easy to use, easy to handle, water-soluble polymer packaging, or biodegradable in the environment, and gradually eliminate aluminum foil, plastics, and other difficult-to-handle small packaging bags. Shan Zhengjun said, “Technology must play a role in it. New types of pesticide packaging have appeared in foreign countries. The inner packaging of pesticides is water-soluble and can be directly melted in pesticide spray buckets; the outer packaging can be used as pesticides without touching it. The recycling and recycling of ordinary plastics will greatly reduce the disposal and disposal costs.” (Technology Daily, Zhejiang Longyou, June 5th)