The rapidly developing country is under pressure from the international community to reduce pollution and waste, and the government has already spoken of a bigger commitment to the environment.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of this year's World Packaging Conference in Beijing this week, vice-premier Zeng Peiyan urged China's booming packaging industry to consume less resources and use 'greener' solutions.
China has one of the world's fastest growing packaging industries, expected to be worth €45 billion by 2010. Currently worth around €30 billion, it contributes 2 per cent to the country's GDP and employs 3 million people.
But many of the materials used in China are now less popular in western markets, giving way to more advanced products that are easier to recycle. Plastic is increasingly replacing glass and metal but it is usually PVC rather than the more lightweight materials being used in Europe.
Zeng said that the government wants to promote the use of packaging materials that are degradable and can be easily recycled. It is also considering new laws that will ban over-packaging, he said.
The vice-premier added that the Chinese government wants to encourage foreign cooperation in the packaging industry to help it develop more advanced materials.
Imports of packaging and processing machinery were already worth more than US$1 billion in 2003 and this figure is growing by around 20 per cent each year, according to AsiaInvest.
Jean-Charles Fresnel, vice-president of Sleever International, a French manufacturer of plastic sleeves, told AP-Foodtechnology.com that the Olympics might be an additional boost to the government's environment policy, and as a result, high-tech packaging materials.
"It would be great if China changed its policy on the environment. This could be the opportunity to introduce new polymers onto the market," he said.
Once a common packaging material, PVC is hardly used in Europe these days, where there are stricter environmental regulations and growing consumer demand for biodegradable, and even natural, materials. But in China more than 90 per cent of the plastics used are PVC, estimates Fresnel.
Additional pressure could come from the multinationals with increasing business in the Chinese market. Some of these groups have adopted global policies on their use of packaging materials and may therefore lead a shift away from PVC, said Fresnel.
Another speaker, Shi Wanpeng, president of the China Packaging Federation, said that more efforts are needed to perform related research and development in a bid to supply the market with better packaging products. "We should try to find more effective technology of waste recycling of packaging so as to realize the maximum resource-efficiency," he told the several hundred visitors to the conference.
According to the China Packaging Federation, China's packaging industry had a turnover of US$50 billion in 2005, thanks to an annual average growth of 14 per cent over the past two decades. Last year it grew by more than 20 per cent.
