Keywords: green packaging export trade impact strategy
Implementing green packaging is an important means to improve the competitiveness of China's export commodities and actively develop foreign trade, and it is also an important measure to implement sustainable development. This paper introduces the connotation of green packaging, analyzes the negative influence of green packaging on China's export trade, and puts forward some strategic suggestions on implementing green packaging in China's export trade. Green packaging originated from Our Common Future published by the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development 1987. By1June, 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development had adopted the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Agenda for the 20th Century of 265,438+,and then a green wave with the protection of the ecological environment as its core was set off around the world. In today's international market, the requirements of environmental protection and "green packaging" have been paid more and more attention, and have become a necessary prerequisite for more and more countries to import products. Facing the challenge of environmental protection packaging in the international market, developing green packaging to deal with green barriers is an inevitable choice for China to consolidate and expand its export market.
I. Connotation of Green Packaging "Green packaging", also known as "environment-friendly packaging", refers to packaging that is harmless to the ecological environment and human health, recyclable and can promote the sustainable development of the national economy. In other words, the whole process of packaging products from raw material selection, product manufacturing, use, recycling and abandonment must meet the requirements of ecological environment protection. Including saving resources and energy, reducing quantity, avoiding waste generation, easy recovery, recycling, incineration or degradation and other eco-environmental requirements. With the progress of science and technology, the connotation of green packaging will be further improved.
Second, the impact of green packaging on China's export trade In the process of vigorously developing China's foreign trade, green packaging has become a threshold for China's products to be exported to many developed countries and newly industrialized countries and regions. Various green packaging trade barriers prevailing in the world market directly threaten the development of China enterprises' export trade, and the negative impact on China's foreign trade export includes at least the following three aspects:
(1) The trade volume of export commodities and the export market have decreased relatively. After China's entry into WTO, foreign technical barriers to trade show a trend of extending from commodities themselves to commodity packaging. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, nearly $24 billion of China's export commodities are affected every year because they can't meet the packaging requirements of foreign developed countries. Fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and flowers, as the bulk products of China's export products, have low preservation level, greatly increased transportation costs and high loss rate of rough packaging. China's export trade is dominated by low-tech manufactured goods and primary products, and its main markets are developed or more developed countries such as Japan, the United States, the European Union, South Korea and Southeast Asia. Most of the green packaging barriers set by it are environmental protection technical standards that Chinese products can't reach in a short time, which makes China suffer many unreasonable restrictions and the export market shrinks relatively.
(2) The production cost of export enterprises has increased, and the international competitive advantage has weakened. In order to meet the packaging requirements of importing countries and comply with their packaging laws and regulations, China must develop or import new packaging materials and reposition and design the product packaging; In order to meet the requirements of importing countries for compulsory recycling and reuse of packaging materials, China has to rely on sellers or waste treatment centers in importing countries to treat packaging waste; In order to obtain foreign green packaging marks, China must pay for the inspection, testing and evaluation of packaging, as well as the application fee and annual fee for the marks; Sometimes, in order to meet the different requirements of different importing countries, enterprises in China even have to develop different packaging materials. These expenses make China's export products lose their relative advantages in the international market because of their low prices, which leads to a decline in market share and the benefits of export enterprises, thus affecting the business enthusiasm of export enterprises. When the packaging requirements can't meet the standards of other countries, or the cost increase is unprofitable, it may withdraw from the international market, which seriously restricts the development of China's foreign trade.
(3) Green packaging barriers lead to increased trade friction. At present, many countries in the world have put forward more and more strict environmental protection requirements for the packaging materials of their own goods and imported goods by formulating various laws and regulations: for example, the European Union stipulates that packaging products that cannot be reused or regenerated will be excluded from the market from 2000; France stipulates that manufacturers and importers must achieve 70% recycling rate of waste packaging. Although there are international environmental protection conventions and international environmental protection legal standards, there is a certain gap between the development of environmental protection technology and the investment of environmental protection funds due to the different development stages of countries, which leads to the differences of environmental protection standards among countries and the friction of international trade. As the largest developing country in the world, there is a big gap between China and developed countries in Europe and America in the formulation and implementation of environmental standards, capital investment and environmental technology level, and green packaging barriers are increasingly hindering China's exports.
Three, China's export trade to implement green packaging recommendations
(a) government-led, promote the legalization, standardization and information construction of green packaging.
1. Legalization. The successful experience abroad proves that it is necessary and effective to legalize and standardize green packaging. China's existing laws and regulations on green packaging are still far from perfect, so we must learn from foreign advanced experience and formulate green packaging regulations as soon as possible. The main purpose of legalization of green packaging in China is to deal with technical barriers and protect trade interests; Protect the ecological environment internally. The principle of "whoever pollutes should be treated" must be clarified, and the use of non-environmental packaging materials, compulsory reuse and recovery rate of packaging materials should be prohibited or restricted.
2. standardization. In the wave of international standardization, some countries set up technical barriers to imported goods by using the standards and regulations of commodity packaging and labeling, which increased the technical difficulty and cost burden. There are about 500 national packaging standards in China, which constitute the basic framework of the packaging standard system. But most of them still have a considerable gap with the standards of developed countries. The standard is outdated, the operability is poor, and the relevant standards are not matched, which can not fully meet the international market demand. Therefore, the implementation of green packaging strategy in export trade requires systematic coordination and arrangement by the departments of environment, economy and trade, commodity inspection, industry and commerce, production enterprises and so on, and formulates a packaging standard system that conforms to China's reality and combines with international packaging standards to guide the packaging of China's export commodities.
3. Informatization. Many export enterprises in China have limited understanding of the requirements of importing countries in packaging materials, standards and specifications, and are seriously lacking in information, which leads to the export packaging not adapting to the international market. Objectively speaking, this requires the relevant state functional departments to build a multi-party information platform, communicate with international law and standard formulation and implementation agencies, import and export enterprises, packaging enterprises, expert consulting institutions and professional media, timely, accurately and in detail convey national packaging laws and standards, popularize green packaging knowledge, collect and track foreign trade barrier information, promptly notify scattered enterprises, coordinate product enterprises and packaging enterprises to seriously study, and take active measures for China enterprises to break through barriers.
(2) Strengthen the awareness of green packaging of export enterprises and build a green packaging system.
1. Update the concept of green packaging. It embodies the principle of "4R+ 1D", that is, low consumption, recyclable, reusable, recyclable and degradable green packaging is the mainstream of international packaging at present. However, some export enterprises in China do not know enough about this, which leads to improper export packaging strategy. For example, too complicated gift packaging is not only restricted by the customs of importing countries, but also not favored by consumers who love environmental protection in the market. Therefore, it is necessary to update the packaging concept and consciousness of China export enterprises.
2. Increase investment in scientific research, introduce and train professionals. At present, due to the lack of clear preferential policies such as investment, credit, tax and so on, packaging environmental protection projects can not attract large-scale social and private investment, and insufficient investment in science and technology, resulting in a serious shortage of scientific and technological talents in the packaging industry and weak technical development capabilities. Moreover, due to the weak scientific and technological development ability and scattered power of the packaging industry, it is difficult to play the function of mutual cooperation, resulting in a large number of scientific and technological achievements not being applied to the production of packaging. Therefore, it is imperative to increase personnel training and R&D investment.
3. Packaging materials and packaging design should meet the requirements of environmental protection. Only when the packaging materials of export commodities meet the import requirements can they be imported into the importing country. Therefore, the packaging of export commodities should avoid using toxic materials, use recycled materials as much as possible, actively develop the technology of using plants as packaging materials, choose a single packaging material, and reduce the trouble caused by the separation and disintegration of various materials. In packaging design, designers must investigate the specific requirements of environmental protection packaging in the international market; In the design, we should also consider highlighting the environmental marketing logo to show that a commodity has a specific environmental quality, take the road of "green marketing", win the favor of consumers and achieve the purpose of expanding exports.
4. Attach importance to environmental labeling and environmental management certification. Environmental labeling refers to the signs and certificates confirmed and issued by designated certification bodies according to environmental standards and regulations, to show that products not only meet quality standards, but also meet specific environmental protection requirements in production, function and disposal process, which is harmless or extremely harmful to the ecological environment. Under the background that green standards have become the new standards of international trade, the most effective weapon for enterprises to deal with green barriers is to pass the ISO 14000 certification of environmental management series marks. Therefore, Chinese enterprises, especially foreign trade enterprises, should comprehensively improve the level and ability of environmental management, strive to pass international certification as soon as possible, and fully promote the green development strategy of sustainable development of foreign trade enterprises.
5. Strengthen cooperation between domestic and foreign enterprises. Enterprises should create conditions, strengthen contact and cooperation with relevant foreign enterprises, actively introduce mature and advanced foreign technologies, and shorten the technological gap with foreign enterprises. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the coordination and cooperation of domestic enterprises. While relying on the government to manage and coordinate through macroeconomic means, packaging enterprises should realize cooperation and competition and participate in the international market as a whole.
(III) Establishing an early warning coordination mechanism for export trade packaging industry As far as China's current situation is concerned, the main business entities of China's foreign trade industry are small and medium-sized collective and private enterprises, and a considerable part of them are self-import and export, and their packaging products are mainly purchased by scattered small and medium-sized packaging enterprises. Individual enterprises in the production and packaging links of export trade are still fragmented, and there is no overall and effective coordination mechanism to deal with the green packaging barriers in export trade. In other words, the development of export packaging industry has not risen to a certain height. Therefore, the export trade packaging industry association should establish an efficient early warning and coordination mechanism as soon as possible, pay attention to the international green packaging trend, adapt to market changes, and actively prevent and resolve green packaging barriers.
(d) Make full use of the relevant WTO agreements and dispute settlement mechanisms to eliminate the barriers to green packaging trade as much as possible. Compared with developed countries, there is still a big gap in China's packaging technology. Facing the green barriers set by developed countries higher than China's packaging technical standards, China should make full use of WTO agreements and dispute settlement mechanisms to negotiate with countries that set green barriers to packaging to solve the problem. Make full use of the principle of non-discrimination and national treatment and the "exception clause" in the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, prevent developed countries from applying double standards to China's goods, apply for technical assistance from the WTO and relevant developed countries in time, and extend the adaptation period or transition period for implementing technical measures, so as to buffer the pressure of China enterprises to deal with foreign technical barriers and enhance their adaptability to foreign technical measures.
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