China: amendment to the solid waste law adopted on 29 April 2020. It takes effect on 1 September

On 29 April 2020 the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress adopted a thorough amendment to the law on the prevention and control of environmental pollution by solid waste. The changes take effect on 1 September 2020 and introduce, at statutory level, a national system for classifying household waste.

Main changes

Based on the text of the law and on descriptions by law firms and the media, the amendment:

• introduces a national system for classifying (sorting) household waste and obliges all entities and individuals to separate it and deposit it in designated places; local governments from county level upwards are to speed up the building of a system for collecting, transporting and disposing of sorted waste,
• imposes on schools an obligation to educate pupils about sorting household waste,
• provides for fines of 50,000 to 500,000 yuan for entities for failing to sort waste and deposit it in designated places, and, for individuals, as set out in the regulations,
• declares that the state is gradually working towards zero imports of solid waste, and provides for fines of 500,000 to 5 million yuan for illegal imports,
• bans or restricts the production, sale and use of non-degradable plastic bags and other single-use plastic products, and also requires compliance with standards limiting excessive packaging,
• requires medical waste to be managed according to the national catalogue of hazardous waste and requires local governments to develop capacity to process it,
• tightens liability: law firms describe, among other things, higher penalty ranges, the possibility of daily fines for persistent violations, joint liability of the party commissioning and the entity processing the waste, and an obligation to take out environmental damage liability insurance for hazardous waste operators.

Significance for organic waste

Anchoring sorting in statute gave cities a basis for introducing or tightening their own regulations — such as Beijing's of 1 May 2020 — and for planning infrastructure for kitchen waste, including digestion facilities. The law also links waste management to broader environmental policy, because waste management is one of the sources of methane from landfills.

Legal status after 2026

NPC Observer reports that the law discussed here was repealed by the Ecological and Environmental Code, which has applied since 15 August 2026 (adopted on 12 March 2026). We have not analysed the code's provisions on waste, so we do not describe them here.

What this means for Poland/Europe

The amendment is an example of the move from local experiments to a national legal basis — analogous to the Polish path from municipal resolutions to the Act on Maintaining Cleanliness and Order in Municipalities (ustawa o utrzymaniu czystości i porządku w gminach). For the biogas industry, the sorting thread is the most important: the fuller and cleaner the collection of kitchen waste at source, the better the feedstock for digestion.