Biodegradable plastic shopping bags are produced primarily from biodegradable resins, providing a convenient and environmentally friendly alternative for daily life. Over the past five years, my country's biodegradable plastic shopping bag production capacity has seen an annual growth rate exceeding 20%, with a projected total market output of approximately 550,000 tons by 2025. This translates to the replacement of about 20 billion traditional plastic bags annually, significantly reducing the overall usage of traditional plastic shopping bags.
The current national standard for biodegradable plastic shopping bags was released in 2019. With advancements in production technology and changes in testing and market supervision needs, this standard has been revised and improved accordingly. The new national standard for "Biodegradable Plastic Shopping Bags" was recently released and will officially take effect on January 1, 2027.
The new standard improves product labeling for biodegradable plastic shopping bags, clarifying the symbols and text used for biodegradability labeling to facilitate consumer identification and product supervision.
Furthermore, the new national standard further emphasizes producer responsibility, revising the storage period requirements to allow producers to determine a reasonable storage period based on the performance of biodegradable plastic shopping bags and user needs, and to clearly indicate this on the packaging label. Besides facilitating consumer identification, the new standard also strengthens quality control requirements and modifies requirements such as biodegradability performance.
Simply put, it ensures that the product degrades easily while also being durable and practical. The new standard increases the degradation rate of biodegradable plastic shopping bags from 60% to 90%.
Different requirements apply to the degradation period in different scenarios. Under industrial composting conditions, the maximum time required for complete degradation (i.e., a degradation rate of 90% or higher) is no more than 180 days. In soil and marine environments, the maximum time to achieve a 90% degradation rate is no more than 2 years.
