Environment

As the world’s factory, China’s international supply footprint for extractive raw materials is expansive and growing, from timber to minerals, such as copper, and cobalt. However, China’s domestic policies don’t adequately regulate Chinese outbound investments and Chinese industry has few incentives to green their supply chains or monitor the social impacts. In countries such as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, illegal and environmentally unsustainable logging practices have been driven by the overwhelming demand for timber from China and other countries.

China has a sludge problem. A big one. Wastewater plants in Chinese cities produce a staggering 40 million tons of this semi-solid slurry each year, enough to fill all of Manhattan with a 19-inch deep sludge lake. However, only one-fifth of China’s sludge is properly treated, while the rest is sent to landfills, incinerators, or illegally dumped. Similarly unsustainable methods are used to dispose of the mountains of solid waste generated by China’s urbanites.