How to improve the environmental law system by codifying the environmental laws is a major issue being confronted in China, but the exploration of systematizing environmental law has actually been in place for a long time. Influenced by the trend of foreign environmental legislation, the awareness of systematization is evident in China’s early environmental legislation, and it has been evolving with the growth and expansion of environmental laws. China’s environmental law systematization process differs from that of the developed countries in that it proceeded with the order of “basic law - single law - basic law”. As the basic environmental law, the Environmental Protection Law was originally enacted and then revised with consideration of special environmental laws, but it faced inherent limitations in terms of content, force, and function. In the context of ecological civilization, the codification of environmental laws should play the function of re-systematization, with the goal of reversing the trend of fragmentation, acknowledging the achievements and shortcomings of the past systematization, as well as inheriting and surpassing the achievements of systematization under the basic environmental law model.