China to Expand Waste Import Ban

While many western cities and firms are scrambling to find solutions and workarounds for the mountains of waste plastic, unsorted paper, textile, and slag that can no longer be sent to China, the Chinese government just doubled down on January's waste ban with an announcement that over the next 18 months there will be an additional three stages to the existing ban. It is an announcement that ha…

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China’s Environmental Tax: Why Business Should Act Now

Effective 1 January 2018, the Environmental Protection Tax Law of PRC (hereinafter the law) ushers in a new tax regime to fight the dreadful pollution in China. The tax burdens are unevenly shared out, but all business will risk being overwhelmed if it fails to take actions immediately. Collective Responsibility has been closely tracking the development and implementation of the law. Last month…

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China’s Environmental Tax: What Business Needs to Know

In China, while the pressure of economic growth on the environment has been well documented, over the last few years, there have been a number of pilot and campaigns (nationally and provincially) to identify and reduce pollution at the local level. Since Chinese Premier declared “a war on pollution” in 2014, China has set up plans and targets for cleaning up its air, water, and soil. Last year,…

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Impact of China’s Waste Ban is Global

As the world’s largest waste importer, China received more than 7.35 million tons of plastic scraps and 28.5 million tons of mixed paper in 2016, about half of the globe’s total. Coming mainly from Europe, Japan, and the United States through direct or indirect trade via Hong Kong, for decades the products were flushed in China, a country that was willing to take these products, process them, and…

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2018 – The Year of Strategic Sustainability

Happy New Year and welcome to 2018; the year that sustainability goes strategic in China. Yes, we know that this may appear to be an overly optimistic view of 2018, and some of you might be wondering what we at Collective Responsibility were drinking over the holiday. But while we were on break reflecting over the work we have done, the conversations we have had, and the regulations we have see…

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Do Migrants Still Want an Urban Hukou?

The past 40 years of China’s economic transformation has drastically changed the relationship between its rural and urban populations, and through this process, more than 277 million rural migrants have moved to the cities to find work. Migrants who do not lack access to social services like healthcare, housing and education because they hold a rural Hukou, and thus are not considered urban reside…

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New Regulation: 2017 China Volunteer Service Law

Following the recent changes in Foreign and domestic charity laws, this week the Volunteer Service Regulation was released (Chinese version here), and just like the charity laws, there is the potential for this law to impact CSR programming in China. With an effective date of July 1, 2017, the first article setting out the intent of the new law: These Regulations are drafted so as to develop…

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A Complex Regional Challenge for China’s New Environmental Minister

China announced this week the appointment of Chen Jining as its next Environmental minister. An environmental specialist and current president of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, he will take over from the widely criticized, Zhou Shengxian, with the move set to pave the way for a stronger stance on domestic environmental policy. His selection comes off the back of a highly decorated academic career…

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