Shanghai court sentences waste smuggler to 3 years in prison

Shanghai No 3 Intermediate Court announced on Tuesday that a man surnamed He, who smuggled more than 90 metric tons of banned plastic boxes and polypropylene secondary film to Shanghai, was sentenced to imprisonment for three years with probation and fined 300,000 yuan ($43,000).

Although knowing these two types of waste were on the forbidden list for import, between March and April 2018, He disguised them as average trade products in containers and declared to customs they were recycled materials. The court did not reveal the source country of the solid waste.

In July 2017, China decided to phase out imported waste and switch to domestic alternatives by 2020. The country has since introduced a ban on the import of solid waste, which covers 40 types so far and will soon include another 24 by the end of this year, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

Since then, waste imports to China have dropped dramatically, down by 46.5 percent in 2018 from the previous year, according to the General Administration of Customs.

However, cracking down on smuggling remains a priority this year, customs officials said. In 2018, the customs officers across the country investigated 481 criminal cases related to waste smuggling, involving about 1.55 million metric tons of garbage, customs officials said.