CHINA aims to cut solid waste imports to zero by next year as it looks to reduce pollution and encourage recyclers to treat soaring volumes of domestic trash, a senior environment ministry official said Thursday.

Since the 1980s, China has taken in hundreds of millions of tons of foreign paper, plastic, electronic waste and scrap metal for recycling by an army of backyard workshops.

The government began restricting deliveries last year, while customs authorities have launched a series of crackdowns on waste smuggling, leading to hundreds of arrests.

“China will further tighten restrictions of waste imports and eventually aims to realize zero waste imports by 2020,” Qiu Qiwen, director of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s solid waste division, said on the sidelines of a briefing.

China imported 22.6 million tons of solid waste last year, down 47 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said.

In December, the government also vowed to ban imports of more varieties of scrap steel, copper and aluminum starting from July, and the veto will be extended to products such as scrap stainless steel and titanium at the end of this year.

The aim was to block imports of all waste products that could be sourced domestically. Qiu said products not included on the banned list would also be restricted by next year, but high-quality material would still be accepted.

(SD-Agencies)