2015 Rules on the Recycling of Cigarette Packaging Cartons Issued

On October 20, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration issued a notice, assigning the targets and tasks for the recycling of cigarette packaging cartons in the industry in 2015. The notice requires that next year the recycling scale of the whole industry must reach 13.5 million cartons, of which 10 million cartons are to be recycled by industrial and commercial enterprises in the same province (autonomous region, municipality) and 3.5 million cartons by industrial and commercial enterprises in neighboring provinces. The notice also assigned specific tasks to the provincial-level industrial and commercial enterprises and put forward clear requirements.

The notice points out that the recycling of cigarette packaging cartons is of important and far-reaching significance for transforming the development mode of the industry, building a circular economic system, establishing a good image of responsible tobacco, and consolidating the tobacco monopoly system. All units in the industry should take it as an important part of enterprise production and operation, attach great importance to it, and vigorously implement it.

The notice emphasizes that all units in the industry should further establish and improve the evaluation, reward and punishment system, and strengthen supervision, inspection, assessment and notification of work progress and quality; they should strengthen coordination, plan and prepare early for the recycling of cigarette packaging cartons in neighboring provinces, jointly establish a quality traceability mechanism for recycled cigarette packaging cartons, improve work processes and quality standards, further increase the number of brands and specifications of recycled cigarette packaging cartons, expand the scale of recycling, and increase the intensity of production scheduling for recycled cigarette packaging cartons, so as to ensure the full completion of the annual targets and tasks.

The notice points out that enterprises that export brands under cooperative production should create conditions for the recycling of cigarette packaging cartons by the enterprises that receive the brands, and allow the receiving enterprises to use recycled packaging cartons for cigarettes sold locally and for cigarettes shipped directly to neighboring provinces for sale.

The notice requires that, in order to increase the resources for the recycling of cigarette packaging cartons by industrial enterprises and ensure the completion of the annual targets and tasks, the sales volume of key cigarette brands of the industry in the main sales areas of non-neighboring provinces shall be counted into the base for the recovery and return of cigarette packaging cartons by the relevant commercial enterprises, and the relevant commercial enterprises shall return all of these cigarette packaging cartons to the relevant industrial enterprises. To facilitate the receipt and return transport of cigarette packaging cartons by industrial enterprises in neighboring provinces and the main sales areas of key brands, the logistics management departments of the provincial bureaus (companies) shall take the lead and be responsible for collecting in a unified manner and properly keeping the cigarette packaging cartons of the relevant industrial enterprises, and hand them over to the industrial enterprises in a centralized manner and establish handover ledgers.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361750.html