HAIKOU, October 22. /TASS/. Sanya's Environmental Protection Authority and the Basel Convention Regional Center for Asia and the Pacific signed a memorandum on cooperation to set up capacity on Hainan to tackle plastic and microplastic pollution of seas and oceans. According to the Sanya Daily, the signing of the document took place in the presence of representatives of the Sanya government and the Norwegian Embassy in China.

This document provides for a number of educational activities in Sanya to combat plastic pollution of the marine environment and other waste, in addition, the agreement provides for monitoring the state of the seas, collecting and analyzing data, as well as enhancing preventive measures to combat environmental pollution in Sanya. The memorandum provides for the development of reproducible and scalable practices and measures of tackling and preventing pollution that China can offer the world.

According to the signed document, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection acts as a customer, while the Basel Convention Regional Center for the Asia-Pacific will become an executor in the field of assessing various environmental impacts and developing tools and techniques for monitoring the environmental situation. Moreover, the center will have to develop measures for the Chinese government to prevent and control pollution of the marine environment with plastic and other waste, and provide technical assistance to Chinese specialists.

Li Jinhui, Executive Director of the Basel Convention Regional Center for the Asia-Pacific Region, noted that the Sanya government's policy to implement best practices to tackle ocean pollution from plastic and other waste can serve as an example for other coastal cities in China and countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative", and will also make a direct contribution to measures to reduce China's pollution of the world's oceans.

The Hainan authorities are currently implementing a series of environmental protection measures. Since October, four large provincial cities - Haikou, Sanya, Sansha and Danzhou - have introduced mandatory sorting of household waste. These cities will become a kind of pilot demonstration zones, the practice of which will subsequently be extended to other regions of the province. In each city, on the basis of government and party bodies, schools, residential areas, shops and shopping centers, waste sorting centers have been created, where citizens will be able to learn more about the new classification system for household waste. The government plans to generally complete the creation of all the infrastructure necessary for waste processing by 2022.