Labelled as the world’s first sustainable city, the Dongtan Eco-city project will be used by the Chinese government as a template for future urban sustainable planning. Strategically situated on the island of Chongming, 15km north of Shangai, Dongtan Eco-city will be home to 500,000 citizens by the year 2040. China is currently immersed in a complex rural-urban transition, 400 cities are expected to be built over the next 20 years. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Chinese authorities are concerned with the development of dynamic, liveable and eco-friendly cities as a means to maintain economic and social vitality in the long term.

Dongtan is planned so citizens live near their workplace, while efficient clean public transportation makes every area accessible. Energy will be generated through a combination of heat and power systems linked to the use of renewables. Buildings will have photovoltaic solar panel cells and small wind turbines. Additionally, community waste management recycling will generate clean energy from organic waste, such as the millions of rice husks that are thrown away each day, reducing in this way land fills that severely damage the environment. The city’s sewage will fertilise the surrounding farmland and rainwater will be captured in canals for future recycling and consumption.

Ultimately, the initiative will set the right conditions to achieve incremental changes in the social, economic and environmental infrastructures, which act as operational supports for sustainability and that will allow the city to adjust to the demographic changes expected in the coming years. The social infrastructure facilitates social inclusion, mobility and competitiveness; the economic infrastructure acts as a means to create the right incentives to promote sustainable and competitive economic growth and the environment infrastructure as a means to improve the quality of life.

Many countries and cities around the world are developing new tools and strategies to minimize the environmental costs through the reduction of hazardous waste and materials. Local governments and communities are conscious that environmental regulations are not enough to push industries to develop innovative and alternative solutions for environmental improvement. As Richard Florida points out, 'The overly simplistic notion that environmental regulations some-how magically cause large numbers of firms to innovate in ways that reduce environmental risk and improve business performance is a fantasy...' Although it’s hard to deny that plastic, and the range of products that derive from it, has made a major contribution to make modern life more comfortable, today it represents a huge treat for our ecosystem.

Policies against plastic use are now proliferating in many cities worldwide. The massive distribution and reliance on plastic bags and bottles have considerable environmental negative effects. Plastic is considered one of the major sources of litter in urban and rural environments; furthermore, it not only affects the cities landscape, but also represents a major treat to wildlife. In 1994 Denmark introduced a packaging tax, since then the consumption of paper and plastic bags have been reduced by 66 percent. In 2001, Taiwan introduced a ban on distribution of free single-use plastic bags, which included supermarkets, fast food chains, and stores. Bangladesh banned the use and distribution of polythene bags in 2002, as they found that plastic bags were the main cause of failure of the country’s drainage systems during the massive 1998 floods. In 2002, all supermarket chains in Ireland have been forced to charge a 15c tax on each new plastic bag.

In April of 2007, Modbury became Britain’s and Europe’s first free plastic bag town. Also, in the same year, Hong Kong reached a 'Voluntary Agreement on Plastic Reduction' policy with ten major retail chains, with the goal of reducing the distribution of over 120 million shopping bags a year. Just some days ago, San Francisco became the first city in the world to ban the use of City funds to purchase bottled water. The reason, it’s proven scientifically that in developed cities, the quality of bottled water is not better than water form the tap. Why pay more for an unnecessary plastic bottle of water that also damages the environment.

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