One word: PVC

(Okay, so it's actually two words, polyvinyl chloride.) According to an article in the trade publication Plastics 2456, the race is on to find a more environmentally-friendly, health-conscious alternative to PVC shrink wraps on food, which can contaminate the environment with dangerous chemicals. Many countries have launched regulations to ban or limit the use of PVC films. Europe has prohibited the use of PVC films in food packaging since 1992, and Japan, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan have followed suit.
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Pollution in China has devastating Environmental and Economic Consequences

A hard-hitting editorial in the Shanghai Daily alleges that realistic estimates put the environmental damage of industrial growth there at 8-13 percent of China's GDP growth each year, "which means that China has lost almost everything it has gained since the late 1970s due to pollution." The author, Pan Yue, vice-minister of China's State Environmental Protection Administration, says the environmental degradation came about from an misreading of Marxist theory that led most regions in the nation to cast aside traditional Chinese culture, with its emphasis on harmony between human beings and nature, in the mistaken belief that economic development would solve all their problems.
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