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Source : TEA LEAF NATION, 05.01.13In the past weeks, Chinese citizens have learned that the styrofoam boxes from which they eat their lunches will soon be legal. On February 16, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s highest economic policy-making body, changed the Industrial Restructuring Catalog (2011) and removed disposable foam plastic tableware from the list of banned products. On May 1, the fourteen-year ban will be formally removed.Ban? What Ban?The fact that it had ever been illegal came as a surprise. Many Chinese did not know the widely prevalent tableware has in fact been banned since January 23, 1999, when the former State Economic and Trade Commission issued “Decree No. 6,” which placed styrofoam tableware on the list of products to be phased out. Formal prohibition of production followed in 2001. Despite the ban, styrofoam products accounted for 76% of the market for disposable tableware in 2011, up 23% from 2005. Annual sales are estimated at 15 billion RMB (about US$2.4 billion).The recent lift of the longstanding ban has caused widespread public debate in new and traditional media, with environmental NGOs and experts stepping in to organize roundtable discussions between various stakeholders. The measure is widely perceived as a step backward, both because it sends the wrong environmental message and because of the opacity of the process that brought about the change. As China’s oldest NGO, Friends of Nature (@自然之友), wrote on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter:Friends of Nature is of the opinion that the lift of the ban on styrofoam plastic goes against global trends of waste reduction. Moreover, the public has been kept out of the decision making process and there has been very little information released. The NDRC statement is overly general… we need an official explanation of how this fits with “green products.”Read more at ChinaFileRelatedErnest Kao, China to lift ban on disposable styrofoam lunch boxes, South China Morning Post, 2013-3-14 (accessed 1st May 2013)Chen Tian, Boxes of poison? Global Times  2013-3-26 (accessed 1st May 2013)