Draft Law Restricting Excessive Packaging of Commodities Opens for Public Comment

As the prime example of excessive packaging of goods, mooncakes finally succeeded in "slimming down" this year. As the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, a spot check of mooncake product quality announced by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine shows that only 1% of mooncakes have excessive packaging problems. The excessive packaging phenomenon in which cigarettes, liquor, tea, cameras and even gold ingots appear in mooncake gift boxes has been effectively curbed.

The topic of restricting excessive packaging of goods, triggered by excessively packaged mooncakes, has gone through several years of ups and downs, and this year has seen substantive progress. This afternoon, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine held a legislative hearing on the Regulations on Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods (Draft), at which more than 40 representatives from enterprises, industry associations and consumers, together with legal experts, engaged in heated discussion on issues such as "packaging void ratio", "number of packaging layers", "packaging cost" and "legal liability".

280 billion yuan of packaging waste thrown away every year

Liu Zhaobin, Director of the Department of Laws and Regulations of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said in the drafting explanation of the Regulations on Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods (Draft) that in recent years the problem of excessive packaging of goods in China has become increasingly prominent, which not only wastes resources and aggravates environmental pollution but also harms the interests of consumers, and all sectors of society have voiced strong concerns about it. And most of the packaging materials used once and then discarded constitute excessive packaging, while garbage disposal costs are a considerable expense as well. One statistic shows that in China 280 billion yuan worth of packaging waste alone is thrown away for nothing every year.

According to the introduction, the European Union, the United States, Japan, South Korea and China's Taiwan region all have similar laws, regulations and standards restricting excessive packaging. At present, China still has no dedicated laws or regulations restricting excessive packaging; there is only one principled provision in Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the Cleaner Production Promotion Law: "Enterprises shall package products reasonably and reduce the excessive use of packaging materials and the generation of packaging waste." At the same time, the draft circular economy law makes principled provisions on two aspects, namely reducing resource consumption and facilitating recycling, and does not make very detailed provisions on the specific matter of excessive packaging either.

"Therefore, the state urgently needs to issue relevant regulations to make specific provisions, to break away from the current situation of having no law to rely on, to actively guide manufacturing enterprises to save resources, to severely punish excessive packaging practices, to regulate the packaging industry and to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers." Liu Zhaobin's remarks won unanimous agreement from the representatives at the hearing.

The reporter noted that the Regulations on Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods (Draft) under discussion is divided into 7 chapters, namely "General Provisions, Conformity Requirements for Restricting Excessive Packaging, Obligations of Commodity Producers and Sellers, Supervision and Administration, Determination of Excessive Packaging, Legal Liability and Supplementary Provisions", with 44 articles in total.

The dispute over the "3 figures"

"The packaging void ratio of goods shall not exceed 55%";

"Apart from the initial packaging, the number of packaging layers of goods shall not exceed 3";

"Apart from the cost of the initial packaging, the packaging cost of goods shall not exceed 15% of the selling price of the goods".

In the heated exchanges at the afternoon hearing, these 3 figures in the draft regulations were mentioned repeatedly by the attending representatives.

Dr. Lian Mian of the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University believes that the provisions that the packaging void ratio of goods shall not exceed 55% and that the number of layers shall not exceed 3 are too one-size-fits-all.

"May I ask, how will diamond rings be packaged in the future? If an exquisite jade pendant were put in a plastic bag, probably no one would dare buy it." As a Hong Kong resident, Dr. Lian Mian criticized that the draft regulations are unfavorable to the development of China's creative industry and show disrespect for the design industry. "Packaging design embodies art. Imagine if in the future all goods in China were packaged in 3 layers — how dull that would be!"

Pang Haichao, manager of the packaging procurement department of Beijing Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., was equally perplexed. He said that some medicines consist of just two small tablets, and with a packaging void ratio not exceeding 55%, how should such medicine be packaged in the future? Take also the very precious wild ginseng — it weighs only 3 to 5 grams, but its roots, fibers and stems are spread out very widely, so packaging it requires a large void ratio, and it is very hard to keep it no greater than 55%.

As the only representative from the information industry attending the hearing, Zhao Jun, director of quality and standards at Lenovo (Beijing) Limited, said that everyone knows electronic products drop in price quickly; taking USB flash drives alone as an example, the price difference over just a few months is very large. "It is very difficult to keep the packaging cost of goods within 15% of the selling price of the goods."

Amid the criticism, active supporters of the draft also stepped forward. A female consumer representative pointed out on the spot that without the mandatory provisions of these 3 numerical indicators, the draft regulations would lose their core content and there would be no need for the regulations to exist at all. "The rule that the packaging void ratio of goods shall not exceed 55% exists in Germany's regulations restricting excessive packaging — why can't we follow suit?"

As a truly technical regulation in our country, the drafting of the Regulations on Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods (Draft) is difficult, Director Liu Zhaobin admitted in his remarks, and the crux lies in the "degree": how to define "excessive packaging" for different goods and how to implement the several numerical indicators require continuous improvement of the relevant mandatory national standards so as to provide a technical basis.

Will "supervision and administration" leak business secrets?

Besides the controversy triggered by the several figures on restricting excessive packaging of goods, at the hearing most enterprise representatives expressed concerns in their remarks about the provisions of Part 3 of Article 26 of the draft: "When quality and technical supervision departments at or above the county level conduct supervision and inspection of excessive packaging practices suspected of violating the provisions of these Regulations, they may exercise the right to consult and copy relevant contracts, invoices, account books, commodity packaging information files, sellers' purchase records, sales records, etc."

Representatives of Sino-French Joint Venture Dynasty Winery Ltd. and other enterprises worried that while enterprises are not afraid of inspections by quality inspection departments, the copied contracts, account books, commodity packaging information files, sellers' purchase records and other content are all business secrets of the enterprise — once they are leaked, who will bear the losses?

It is learned that in early March this year, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine began organizing the drafting of the Regulations on Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods (Draft). Over 4 months, after two rounds of research, 4 legislative seminars and many discussions and verifications with relevant experts, during which the draft was revised several times, the current draft took shape. In early August, opinions were solicited from the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce through active communication and consultation, and at the same time opinions were publicly solicited from society online.

At present, people are full of expectations for the Regulations on Restricting Excessive Packaging of Goods, hoping that this "goods slimming" law will meet the public soon.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362186.html