
一 | 中国南海黄岩岛一直是舆论的焦点,很多人却忽略了一个更加核心的“博弈场”,那就是中沙大环礁。

二 | WASHINGTON -- With the growing popularity of disposable e-cigarettes, communities across the U.S. are confronting a new vaping problem: how to safely get rid of millions of small, battery-powered devices that are considered hazardous waste.For years, the debate surrounding vaping largely centered on its risks for high school and middle school students enticed by flavors like gummy bear, lemonade and watermelon.But the recent shift toward e-cigarettes that can’t be refilled has created a new environmental dilemma. The devices, which contain nicotine, lithium and other metals, cannot be reused or recycled. Under federal environmental law, they also aren’t supposed to go in the trash.U.S. teens and adults are buying roughly 12 million disposable vapes per month. With little federal guidance, local officials are finding their own ways to dispose of e-cigarettes collected from schools, colleges, vape shops and other sites.“We are in a really weird regulatory place where there is no legal place to put these and yet we know, every year, tens of millions of disposables are thrown in the trash,” said Yogi Hale Hendlin, a health and environmental researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.In late August, sanitation workers in Monroe County, New York, packed more than 5,500 brightly colored e-cigarettes into 55-gallon steel drums for transport. Their destination? A giant, industrial waste incinerator in northern Arkansas, where they would be melted down.Sending 350 pounds of vapes across the country to be burned into ash may not sound environmentally friendly. But local officials say it’s the only way to keep the nicotine-filled devices out of sewers, waterways and landfills, where their lithium batteries can catch fire.“These are very insidious devices,” said Michael Garland, who directs the county’s environmental services. “They’re a fire risk and they’re certainly an environmental contaminant if not managed properly.”Elsewhere, the disposal process has become both costly and complicated. In New York City, for example, officials are seizing hundreds of thousands of banned vapes from local stores and spending about 85 cents each for disposal.HAZARDOUS WASTEVaping critics say the industry has skirted responsibility for the environmental impact of its products, while federal regulators have failed to force changes that could make vaping components easier to recycle or less wasteful.Among the possible changes: standards requiring that e-cigarettes be reusable or forcing manufacturers to fund collection and recycling programs. New York, California and several other states have so-called extended product responsibility laws for computers and other electronics. But those laws don't cover vaping products and there are no comparable federal requirements for any industry.Environmental Protection Agency rules for hazardous waste don’t apply to households, meaning it's legal for someone to throw e-cigarettes in the garbage at home. But most businesses, schools and government facilities are subject to EPA standards in how they handle harmful chemicals like nicotine, which the EPA considers an “acute hazardous waste," because it can be poisonous at high levels.In the U.S., the push to manage disposable e-cigarettes has chiefly come from schools, which can face stricter regulation if they generate more than a few pounds of hazardous waste per month. Monroe County schools pay $60 to dispose of each one-gallon container of vapes. More than two thirds of the e-cigarettes collected by the county come from schools.“Our schools were very relieved because they had confiscated so much of this material,” Garland said. “If you think of all the high schools across the country, they are in a very difficult place right now.”Lithium in e-cigarette batteries is the same highly sought metal used to power electric vehicles and cellphones. But the quantities used in vaping devices are too small to warrant salvage. And nearly all disposable e-cigarette batteries are soldered into the device, making it impractical to separate them for recycling.Disposable e-cigarettes currently account for about 53% of the multi-billion U.S. vaping market, according to U.S. government figures, more than doubling since 2020.Their rise is a study in unintended consequences.In early 2020, the Food and Drug Administration banned nearly all flavors from reusable e-cigarettes like Juul, the cartridge-based device blamed for sparking a nationwide surge in underage vaping. But the policy didn't apply to disposables, opening the door to thousands of new varieties of fruit and candy-flavored vapes, almost all manufactured in China.In recent months the FDA has begun trying to block imports of several leading disposable brands, including Elf Bar and Esco Bar. Regulators consider them all illegal, but they have been unable to stop their entry to the U.S. and the devices are now ubiquitous in convenience stores, gas stations and other shops. FDA’s tobacco chief, Brian King, said in a statement that his agency “will continue to carefully consider the potential environmental impacts” of vaping products.THE COST OF CONFISCATING DISPOSABLE E-CIGARETTESIn 2020, New York City outlawed the vast majority of e-cigarette types, banning flavors that can appeal to youngsters.City employees conduct thousands of inspections annually, and last year issued more than 2,400 citations to corner stores and bodegas selling illegal flavored products. Adding to the challenge are THC vapes sold at hundreds of unlicensed marijuana shops, a separate but related problem that has mushroomed since New York's legalization of recreational pot.Since last November, officials have seized more than 449,000 vape units, according to city figures. New York City is spending about $1,400 to destroy each container of 1,200 confiscated vapes, but many more remain in city storage lockers. “I don’t think anyone ever considered the volume of these in our community,” said New York Sheriff Anthony Miranda, who leads a task force on the issue. “There’s a tremendous amount of resources going into this effort.” A recent lawsuit against four large vaping distributors aims to recoup some of the city's costs. For now, New Yorkers who vape can bring their used e-cigarettes to city-sponsored waste-collection events.Ultimately those vapes meet a familiar fate: They are shipped to Gum Springs, Arkansas, to be incinerated by Veolia, an international waste management firm. The company has incinerated more than 1.6 million pounds of vaping waste in recent years, mostly unsold inventory or discontinued products.Veolia executives say burning e-cigarettes' lithium batteries can damage their incinerators.“Ideally we don’t want to incinerate them because it has to be done very, very slowly. But if have to, we will,” said Bob Cappadona, who leads the company’s environmental services division.Veolia also handles e-cigarettes from Boulder County, Colorado, one of the only U.S. jurisdictions that actively tries to recycle e-cigarette batteries and components.Historically, Boulder has had one of the highest teen vaping rates in the country, peaking at nearly 33% in 2017. “It was like someone flicked the switch. Suddenly e-cigarettes were everywhere,” said Daniel Ryan, principal of Centaurus High School. Beginning in 2019, county officials began distributing bins to schools for confiscated or discarded e-cigarettes. Last year, they collected 3,500. County staffers sort the devices by type, separating those with removable batteries for recycling. Disposables are packed and shipped to Veolia's incinerator. Shelly Fuller, who directs the program, says managing vape waste has gotten more costly and labor intensive with the shift to disposables.“I kind of miss the days when we had Juuls and I could take each battery out and recycle them very easily,” Fuller said. “No one has time to dismantle a thousand Esco Bars.”___AP video journalist Joseph Frederick contributed to this story from New York___Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.。 最近,中国在南海落下一步棋,中国科学院批准设立中沙群岛海洋生态环境野外观测研究站。 看名字,这似乎只是一个和环境相关的研究站,但实际上,这步棋却可能改变南海的现有局势。 中沙大环礁,这片隐没在海底、鲜为人知的区域,拥有巨大的潜在价值,中沙大环礁是一座巨型沉没环礁,全部隐没水下,最浅处水深约8至9米。 它南北长达约140公里,东西宽约60公里,面积达到8400平方公里,是新加坡国土面积的十倍,然而,这片巨大海域至今无法直接驻人,只能依靠科考船进行短暂观测。 值得注意的是,中沙大环礁是南海盆地的中心地带,其地理位置极为重要,处于南沙群岛与西沙群岛之间。 相比周围区域,它更接近南海的核心腹地,建设一座海洋生态观测站,不仅是对自然资源的科研保护,也是中国强化对这一区域长期管理的一步。 目前,中沙大环礁受水深、补给等技术条件限制,暂时无法实现直接的规模化开发,但通过观测站的设立,中国成功在这片区域扎下科研战略的第一颗“钉子”,实现从短期巡航到长期驻扎的跨越。 一个看似低调的科研决定,却让南海“生态大数据”的“空白区域”逐渐被填补。 那么,这座观测站选择的具体位置又在哪里?真正落脚点又透露了哪些信息? 从地理条件来看,中沙大环礁并不是这次获批观测站最终落地的理想地点,其水域全部隐没水下,水深较大,无法建起长期驻人的设施。 而且,大环礁距离中沙群岛东端的黄岩岛有约300多公里的距离,无法覆盖到黄岩岛周边的观测海域。 因此,最为合理的推测是,新的观测站地址大概率选在了黄岩岛。 黄岩岛具备适宜站点建设的天然条件,礁坪面积广阔,露出水面的礁石坚固,为后续建设提供了良好的基础条件。

三 | 如果站点建在这里,中国就能对周边海域实行稳定的长期观测和资源掌握,此外,黄岩岛距离马尼拉约300多公里,这种近距离位置让菲律宾对中国动向格外敏感。 一旦这个新观测站按照计划在黄岩岛建设完成,将实现多重价值,首先是生态保护,为黄岩岛海域的生物多样性提供长期数据。 黄岩岛 其次,科研站常年有人员驻守、设备运行,这相当于对黄岩岛提出了在“主权”层面的实际存在。 更重要的是,黄岩岛扼守着南海与巴士海峡的西侧,这里是重要国际航线的必经之地,一些关键性资源和数据的采集,将为中国未来的南海治理提供战略保障。 观测站早在2022年就正式纳入中科院野外台站体系,这一体系以长期观测、实时回传数据为主要特征,类似的成功案例已经体现在西沙、南沙两大岛礁的生态观测网络中,而这一次,黄岩岛极有可能成为另一个战略基点。

四 | 相比直接的军事手段,在南海构建制度化管理链条才是更强劲的“软实力”,中国近年针对黄岩岛和中沙群岛区域实施了一系列“立规矩”的动作: 2024年正式公布黄岩岛领海基线,接着在2025年设立黄岩岛国家级自然保护区,并于2026年8月发布具体的保护区管理办法。 这些动作看似与军事无关,但效果却十分显著,设立保护区和管理办法,不仅从法律层面稳固了对该海域的主权主张,还以“生态保护”之名慢慢渗透式强化对海域的实际掌控,而观测站的加入,正是制度链条中不可或缺的一环。 通过这种科学化的方式,中国得以实现对黄岩岛的长效管控,一方面,观测站能够为黄岩岛自然资源“上户口”,提供长期精确的数据支持。 另一方面,它也打破了过去单靠船只巡航维持存在的不稳定状态,实现了更高频、更实时的数据获取与管控。 相比填岛或修码头,观测站的设立是一种更为“润物细无声”的战略手法,既难以对外引发批评,也极大地压缩了其他国家在该海域的活动空间。 菲律宾对此难免关注,但由于观测站名义是“科研与生态保护”,即便菲律宾心知肚明其中的深意,却也没有理由站出来反对。 在国际舆论面前,任何反对环保与科研的行为都可能显得“不合情理”。 这其实正体现了中国的成熟治理思维,即面对复杂局势,稳扎稳打,先确立规则,再展开深远布局。

五 | 至此,悄无声息的中沙观测站,无异于为黄岩岛周边增添了一颗重要的棋子,那么,在未来,南海局势是否会因这颗棋子发生更大的改变?这还需要时间与实践给出答案。 中国设立中沙观测站这一动作看似低调,但背后显然是大布局的一部分,从黄岩岛到中沙大环礁,通过生态保护、科学监测和制度链条的整合,中国的南海主权与战略地位正在悄然上升。 这步棋落下,全局正在改变,时间会证明,这种“润物细无声”的策略将带来怎样巨大的回响。返回,查看更多。
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