Environmental authority targets big polluters

The companies have been fined and told to clean up their acts or risk further action. The move follows a survey of more than 4,000 companies in the capital, assessed their environmental records and pollution control as part of a clean-up of the city in preparation for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

There were no details available on the companies singled out by Sepa.

The action comes as the authority is emphasising the damage being done to the environment by the country’s astonishing economic growth.

“Every increase in revenue we gain at the expense of much higher energy consumption and more serious environmental pollution,” Sepa’s vice-minister, Pan Yue, told the China Daily newspaper.

The authority has released statistics to underline the problems. Energy consumed in China is 2.4 times higher per unit of economic output than the global average. Sulphur dioxide emissions per GDP unit are 68.7 times those of Japan and 60 times those of the US.

Water wastage and soil erosion have also been identified as significant problem areas.

Sepa has said that major pollution-related accidents have been on the increase in recent years. Earlier this year, for instance, a major accident occurred when synthetic ammonia and nitrogen were leaked from a fertiliser plant into the Tuojiang River, a major artery for the vital Yangtze River. It left more than a million people without drinking water for nearly a month and had devastating effects on the river’s ecoystem.

China is pushing forward with plans to introduce a “green GDP” programme to help factor environmental issues into economic planning and regulation.