Illegal makers and sellers of styrofoam lunch boxes dodging disposal fees will be the target of a city blitz in Shanghai in the next three months.

Disposal fees were introduced three years ago, but the regulation is under threat from illegally produced boxes flooding in from neighboring areas.

The shanghai Public Sanitation Bureau and the Shanghai Land Transport Administration will join forces for the crackdown.

The regulation stipulates that one-third of the charge is used for recycling the used styrofoam boxes.

But illegal producers make money by recycling used boxes they collect while avoiding disposal fees and thus increasing the burden on normal producers.

Bureau statistics show about 800,000 disposable lunch boxes enter the local market every day with required fees paid.

But the daily volume of boxes recycled by scrap stations significantly exceeds that number.

"About 10 percent of the lunch boxes circulated in the local market are from places other than Shanghai and their producers manage to shirk their responsibilities," said Tang Jiafu, director of the waste management division under the sanitation bureau.

"Vendors from neighboring provinces usually sneak into the city with a full load of boxes on a truck at night.

"As the disposal fee for each box is 3 fen (0.36 US cents), a truck with about 50,000 boxes can save the producer 1,500 yuan if they escape the charge."

Some normal producers complain that their business is severely hurt.

The manager of a local plastic products company said that it paid 75,000 yuan for disposing of lunch boxes it produced last month, which was much more than it paid three years ago, and the fee was a big impost on a small company.

Yao ying, an official with the public sanitation bureau, said the regulation had played a positive role in containing the random discharge of styrofoam lunch boxes and must be carried on.

"It is the first time we have cooperated with the land transport administration. Stopping illegal vendors at the checkpoints before they come into town would be effective," she said.

Yao said that after the three-month campaign, authorities would formulate a long-term strategy.

(Shanghai Daily May 22, 2004)