Analysis of Chinese National Standards on Packaging and the Environment (CNSPE) Based on Standard Literature Bibliometrics

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the status of the Chinese National Standards on Packaging and the Environment (CNSPE), analyze the existing problems, and discover their possible solutions. Based on the standard bibliometric literature, the metadata information from the CNSPE have been collected and analyzed. The results indicated that the number of CNSPE released showed a wave-like growth with two peaks during 2006–2010 and 2016–2020 driven by both external and internal factors. The basic standard was the main standard sort. The average valid period of a CNSPE was 5.90 years, while the update rate was 23.33%. Public institutions lead the drafting committee of the CNSPE. The percentage of adopting the international or foreign standards was 28.86%, and the average conversion time was 7.61 years. There were four problems deduced from the results, including the unbalanced supply of different sorts of CNSPE, long valid period of standards with low update rates, low engagement of the enterprises, and loose links between national standards and international standards. The corresponding solutions are (1) strengthening market research and combining with policy development to optimize the supply of different sorts of CNSPE; (2) improving the process management ability of standardization organizations to enhance the supervision and feedback of standards development and implementation; (3) providing trainings and broadening dissemination while fulfilling the reward mechanism; and (4) enhancing the compatibility between the national standards system and the international standards system to promote the standard internationalization level.