New survey finds greener lifestyles, room for improvement in China

Chinese people have led increasingly greener lifestyles, but the country still needs to ramp up efforts to promote green consumption, a new survey report unveiled on Monday has found.

Compiled by the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, affiliated with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the annual report on people's environmental behaviors was first issued in 2019. The report this year is based on 12,485 questionnaires collected late last year from 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland.

The Chinese public has better performance in multiple environmental sectors, according to the survey.

Almost 80 percent of interviewees, for example, paid regular attention to environmental information last year, compared with only 60.8 percent in 2019, the report said.

It also found that the ratio of respondents that often bought environmentally friendly products had increased to over 60 percent in 2022 from 30 to 40 percent in 2020.

In 2019, roughly 30 percent of participants in the survey believed they did well in waste sorting. The proportion had almost doubled last year, as found in the latest survey.

The 2023 report also found, however, food waste remains a serious problem in China and many electronics and clothes are discarded though they are still in good enough conditions to be used.

Some 23.3 percent of the interviewees frequently threw away expired food, it said. Over one-fifth respondents bought new electronics though they had ones that still operate well.

Almost 26 percent of people often bought clothes and shoes, and it was quite common for their new items to be left idle for an extended period of time, it said.