On October 9, 2023, the General Administration of Customs issued the "Announcement on the Declaration Requirements for imported Recycled Paper Pulp", requiring the consignee of imported goods or their agent to indicate the process used to produce recycled paper pulp, i.e., dry process or wet process, in the remarks column of the customs declaration form when declaring the import of recycled paper pulp.
Recycled pulp production includes two processes: dry and wet. The dry process directly screens the waste paper after mechanical sorting, without the need for drying treatment, and has a lower cost. The wet process, however, requires hydraulic comminution of waste paper raw materials, which are then concentrated into blocks or formed into pulp boards after multi-stage screening. In this process, fiber quality is improved through techniques such as medium-concentration screening and thermal dispersion. Over the years, the industry has basically reached a consensus on the wet process, but there has always been controversy over the dry process.
On October 31 this year, the plan for the revision of the National Standard for "Recycled Pulp" was approved and issued, and the National Technical Committee for Paper Industry Standardization was responsible for organizing the revision of the standard. This situation has temporarily attracted the calls of some industry experts for the tightening of national standards.
Shi Huixiang, a former deputy director of the Institute of Water Environment at Zhejiang University, explained that during the wet process of producing recycled pulp, impurities are removed during the wet pulping process. The characteristic of the dry grinding process is "no water, only mechanical crushing". The dry grinding process does not use water as a solvent, and thus, there is no opportunity to remove impurities through hydraulic classification, washing, and other steps. Common pollutants in waste paper raw materials, such as plastic fragments, adhesives, microorganisms, and heavy metals (such as lead and cadmium), cannot be effectively separated during the dry grinding process. This "pollutant-containing" dry grinding pulp essentially "packages" foreign solid waste as recycled paper pulp for import.
Professor Jin Yongchang of Nanjing Forestry University also believes that some paper-making enterprises in China are importing waste paper and other "洋垃圾" from developed countries, sending them to Southeast Asian countries for simple grinding and then exporting them to China to obtain huge profits. The common pollutants in waste paper raw materials cannot be effectively separated during the dry grinding process, which is an indirect import of "洋垃圾".
Jin Yongchang, in an interview with reporters on the spot, said that a considerable number of paper mills in China are willing to import recycled pulp by dry process, mainly driven by interests. The price of dry process is relatively low, but once the standards are strictly implemented, the price advantage of dry process may disappear. Enterprises should choose dry or wet process from a scientific and legal perspective, and as long as it meets the standards, it can be imported. Of course, the standards themselves should also be standardized.
To this end, the "Beijing Consensus on imported Recycled Paper Pulp" was released at the seminar, calling on relevant state departments to further strengthen the supervision and management of imported recycled paper pulp, continuously improve the regulatory system, optimize the regulatory process, and enhance regulatory efficiency, so that the revised "Recycled Paper Pulp" national standard can truly become a "safety net" and "firewall" to protect industrial security and ecological security.
