It is hard not to focus on pollution this month with the issuance of the much anticipated ‘Soil Pollution Prevention & Control Action Plan’ or “Soil Ten”, and the release of the 2015 State Of Environment Report. Headline stats are bad: 19.4% of surveyed farmland is polluted and 16.1% is polluted by heavy metals and the 2015 report says China’s overall environmental quality declined in the last year. Clearly, some industries will feel the heat more than others. Check out the latest status of groundwater, rivers, lakes & reservoirs and find out what’s in store for China’s “Hateful Eight” polluting industries named in the Soil Ten. Is this the end of China’s chemical love with nowhere to hide? Get the distilled version of the 231 actions in our Soil Ten review.  Pollutants are carried downstream by rivers. Specific provinces are tagged to specific actions & industries in the Soil Ten and provinces along the Yangtze River feature across actions. This is not surprising as a disproportionately high percentage of China’s heavy metals discharge lie in this region. We take a deeper look into pollution & heavy metal flows from the upper reaches of the river to the delta. Can the Yangtze River continue to flourish as China’s socio-economic powerhouse? Check out key findings from our recently published joint brief with the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP FECO) on the “Water-nomics of the Yangtze River Economic Belt: Strategies & recommendation for green development along the river”. Cleaning-up pollution with green development means China needs innovative technologies and holistic strategies. We take a look at how floating solar can be a solution for China while Doug Woodring, the founder of Plasticity Forum shares key takeaways from the 5th annual forum in Shanghai. It’s not just plastic, all sort of stuff flows down the river into the sea and soil. What happens upstream matters downstream; but if you are downstream, would you pay for the poorer upstream regions to clean up?