First joint environmental consultancy for China

China's first joint venture environmental consulting firm, Environomics, formed with $100,000 from Chinese and U.S. investors, will begin doing business next month, says general manager Husayn Anwar. Last December Beijing slated its environmental industry's output to triple to yuan 10 billion ($1.8 billion)/year by the year 2000 - a response to increased strains on the environment caused by China's economic boom. The chemical industry is the foremost source of emissions of toxic substances such as mercury, phenol, and chromium: it also emits one-third of all industrial wastewater in the country, according to a May 1992 Ministry of the Chemical Industry report. Demand for ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, without any change in technology, is set to triple by 2000, the ministry says