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In June, 2024, the China Petrochemical Industry Federation released a draft national voluntary standard (GB/T) titled “Requirements of concentration limits for restricted substances in recycled plastics” on the National Public Service Platform for Standards Information. The draft standard specifies the concentration limits and test methods for restricted substances. According to the explanatory document of the draft, these restricted substances and their concentration limits are mainly selected and determined based on the “2023 List of Key Controlled New Pollutants”, the “Stockholm Convention”, the REACH Regulation (EU 2017/1000) and the RoHS Directive (2011/65/EU), etc.
Application scope
The standard applies to recycled plastic particles and products made from waste plastics through screening, classification, crushing, cleaning, melt extrusion and other processes. The standard also applies to polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle flakes. It should be noted that restricted substances specified here apply only to the components of the recycled plastics, and not to any subsequent processing, such as modification.
In addition, the standard also does not apply to recycled plastics from hazardous waste such as medical waste, pesticide packaging, and radioactive waste, as well as recycled plastics used as food contact packaging materials and pharmaceutical packaging materials.
Restricted substances
Based on the restriction requirements, restricted substances are divided into three categories as follows.
Substances to be declared free of
There are 12 substances subject to the “Substances to be declared free of”.As these 12 substances have been banned in China and should not be present in waste plastics, manufacturers and importers are not required to conduct tests to measure the content of these substances, but they have to self-declare that the recycled plastics they handle are free of these substances after confirming the procurement sources of the recycled plastics.
Substances that are restricted to contain
There are 11 substances listed as substances that are restricted to contain in the Table 2 of the standard. Concentration limits are specified for these 11 substances and cannot be exceeded.
Substances to be restricted
In addition to the two categories above, 25 substances to be restricted are listed in the Appendix A as reference material.
The following table shows a partial list of “Substances to be declared free of” and “Substances that are restricted to contain”
