While environment-conscious people identify themselves as non-users of plastic bags, Guo Geng, working at a nature reserve of deers in Beijing's suburbs, stands out as a fighter against plastic bags.

Since he started to work in 1998, Guo has seen David's deer in his care dying from devouring waste plastic bags blown over walls from a nearby garbage dump. The innocent herbivores, native to China and under first-level state protection, have taken the bags as grass before indigestion tortured them to death. In one extreme case, an autopsy on a dead dear discovered 4 kg of plastic bags in its stomach. Although workers in the nature reserve tried to pick up every plastic bag they saw, a gale at night could destroy their efforts, covering the pastures for deer with a layer of plastic bags by daylight.

Guo has sought media coverage of the problem by giving speeches at journalist seminars. As a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, he put forward a proposal to the Beijing Municipal Government in 2005, advocating that a new consumption tax on plastic bags should be introduced and the tax income used for the recycling of waste plastic bags and to reduce white pollution.

Guo's efforts have paid off. The dumping ground has been abandoned and indigestion deaths have ceased. Moreover, on January 8, 2008, the State Council ordered a ban on the production, sale and use of ultra-thin bags (defined as less than 0.025 mm thick) as of June 1. Further, supermarkets and shops will be banned from giving free plastic bags to customers as of that date. This is an effort to create a greener society through curbing white pollution. "The environment for deer will get better and better," Guo told Beijing Review.

A solution to white pollution

According to statistics from the China Plastics Processing Industry Association, Chinese consumers use about 1 billion plastic bags every day. That equals plastic consumption of 400,000 to 500,000 tons a year, production of which costs at least 1 million tons of oil. According to a Xinhua report, Beijing's 15 million people discard about 2.3 billion plastic bags and produce plastic packaging garbage of 140,000 tons every year. The annual plastic packaging garbage of Shanghai is 190,000 tons and Tianjin over 100,000 tons.

The ubiquitous face of this huge amount of plastic trash in China includes plastic film residues on farmland, plastic bags sticking to the stems of trees like colorful leaves in the wind and mountains of disposable dishware on garbage dumping grounds. A more grotesque face of plastic pollution is small plastic items that are eaten by mistake by animals on farms, in zoos or in the wilderness and eventually kill them.

One way to dispose of plastic garbage is to bury it in the earth. Yet buried plastic takes about 200 years to degrade, during which time the land can no longer be used for farmland since plastic stops plants from absorbing water and nutrition from soil.

A large amount of plastic waste is burnt in dumping grounds, which has been proved by scientists from many countries to be extremely hazardous to human health. A report in British newspaper The Guardian in 2006 revealed that studies made by scientists from the Tanzania-based University of Dar es Salaam concluded that inhaling toxic gases emitted by burning plastic materials, dioxins and furans, could cause hormonal imbalances in new-born children, as well as cancer, impotence, asthma and a myriad other allergies.

"According to practices in other countries, a ban on free shopping bags could cut the consumption of these plastic bags at least by half," said Ma Zhanfeng, Secretary General of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association.

Well-prepared retailers

As a joint venture warehouse supermarket chain founded by three Chinese companies and Holland-based SHV Holdings, Makro China has expanded to seven outlets in Beijing and Tianjin after 10 years' operation. Since its first outlet opened for business in November 1997, Makro has stuck to a policy of no free shopping bag to its customers. To pack their purchases, patrons of Makro have to bring their own bags or buy degradable plastic bags of two sizes at 0.3 yuan ($0.04) and 1 yuan ($0.14) per bag.

"We sell these bags at their cost prices rather than making money out of them," said Yang Xiaohong, Vice Manager of Makro China. "We just want to encourage our customers to reduce their daily plastic bag use and our loyal customers have got used to it." She explained the initiative of the policy was mainly influenced by the Dutch co-founder of the company. To illustrate on the policy's obvious effect on reducing plastic bag use, Yang quoted that on average Makro China now sells one plastic bag out of around every 30 purchases.

However, as a pioneering retailer in educating customers' environmental consciousness, Makro has to face an unfavorably skewed competition landscape when other chain supermarkets are packing customers' goods in intricate classifications into multiple free plastic bags to show their hospitality. Yang told Beijing Review that Makro's two new outlets in Beijing opened in the second half of 2007 have launched a promotion campaign to provide free plastic bags to customers. "Customers are so used to shopping in other supermarkets with free packing bags that adapting to our style took a little time," said Yang. She said the promotion season will stop after the Spring Festival that falls in February, far ahead of the government deadline of June 1.

Compared with Makro, French supermarket giant Carrefour, with over 100 outlets in 40 Chinese cities, has been less daring in pushing customers into the age of paid plastic bags. Although Carrefour China started to promote the use of a 4.9-yuan ($0.68) cloth shopping bag that can be repeatedly used as early as 2004, results have been mixed with both successes and failures.

One strategy adopted by Carrefour is to open "green" payment channels for customers willing to pay for cloth shopping bags. After a period of time, many Carrefour outlets were forced to remove these channels when the majority of customers preferred waiting in long queues in other payment channels for free plastic bags to paying to go through "green" channels.

However, Spokesman of Carrefour China Chen Bo told Beijing Review that new promotion tricks to encourage the use of cloth shopping bags implemented since November 2007 have been successful. The new incentives for using cloth shopping bags include discounted prices for cloth bags at 2 yuan ($0.28) and deducting 1 yuan ($0.14) from a pay bill if the customer carries away the merchandise with his or her own Carrefour cloth bag. Over 80,000 cloth bags were sold during a 10-day nationwide promotion campaign in November 2007.

However, vendors at millions of outdoor markets across the country, who usually wrap everything for customers in cheap ultra-thin plastic bags, are making preparations of a different sort. According to a report in a daily newspaper in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong Province, plastic bag wholesalers at the city's outdoor markets have received larger than usual bills since the circulation of the ban on plastic bags. The wholesale buyers of these cheap plastic bags, like steamed bun vendors, are competing to stock as many plastic bags before the production of the ultra-thin plastic bags is eliminated in June. They are afraid of running out of plastic bags when their next-door competitors can still provide customers with courtesy bags.

New direction for the industry

"China's restriction has balanced economic growth with environmental protection," said Ma of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association. He admits that the impact on the plastics industry is profound since "the majority of plastic shopping bags used now fall into the category of banned ultra-thin bags."

Ma said the National Development and Reform Commission had solicited suggestions from his association on the content of the circular, especially on the thickness of prohibited plastic bags. Ma then surveyed related member enterprises of his association. "Of course nobody is happy since production would be cut down," he said.

Yet Ma said the flip side of the new policy is that it would spur the development of the degradable plastics industry in China. The ban on plastic bags doesn't apply to those made of degradable material.

Ma said Chinese plastics companies are producing two types of degradable plastics. While biodegradable plastics, which can degrade into carbon dioxide and water without residues, cost twice to three times the price of ordinary plastics, other types of plastics with totally degradable plastic additives, such as calcium carbonate and starch, are made at an equal cost to non-degradable plastics. But according to Ma, for the time being consumer goods retailers still prefer using non-degradable plastic bags since degradable plastic bags are less durable.

Ma said although the degradable plastics industry is still nascent in China, it has been developing very fast in recent years. The annual production of biodegradable and degradable plastics was around 30,000 tons in 2007. Ma expects that figure to grow to 100,000 tons by 2010.