The General Office of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment ("MEE") has recently issued the Guidelines on Available Techniques for the Prevention and Control of Pollution in the Printing Industry (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") to seek comments from the entities concerned by August 30, 2019.
The Draft for Comment provides for the available techniques for preventing and controlling exhausted gas, sewage, solid waste and noise generated in the printing industry, and may be used as a reference for environmental impact assessment for enterprises engaged in the printing industry or construction projects of their production facilities, formulation and amendment of national standards regarding pollutant discharge, pollutant discharge licensing administration, and selection of technologies for pollution prevention and control. With regard to measures for environmental management, the Draft for Comment calls on enterprises to prefer technologies helpful to reduce the generation of pollutants according to their actual situations, and then turn to the suitable end-of-pipe treatment techniques if the said technologies cannot ensure pollutant discharge is up to the standard and in a stable state. Meanwhile, for products with printed packages, their design should be optimized to reduce, as much as possible, the coverage of pictures and words, printing color numbers, ink thickness and the number of ink layers, without prejudice to such products' functions. Printing techniques that generate a relatively low amount of pollutants, such as offset printing and letterpress printing, should be preferred in new projects, reconstruction projects and expansion projects.