Loss of 35 billion yuan annually in recycling of renewable resources

A few days ago, it was learned from the China International Recycling Resources Utilization Industry Expo that the recycling and utilization situation of renewable resources in China is not optimistic. The renewable resources industry is still at a relatively low level of development. A large number of renewable resources have not been recovered and are well utilized and are wasted. It is understood that China's renewable resources that are not used for recycling are worth more than 35 billion yuan. Each year, there are about 3 million tons of scrap steel, 200,000 tons of nonferrous metals, 2 million tons of waste paper, 800,000 tons of waste plastics, and more than 2,000 yuan. Millions of waste household appliances and computers are not recycled.

Due to many factors such as production technology, market mechanism and lack of industry standards in the renewable resources industry, the development of the industry is slow and companies are struggling. The current outstanding issues are the following:

First, the technological transformation of enterprises has been in a semi-perishable state for a long time. In recent years, it has been very difficult for the renewable resources industry to obtain national and local investment funds and technical inputs. The nation’s renewable resource recycling companies still rely on manual labor. There is almost no increase in large-scale scrap steel processing equipment. There are few mechanical sorting equipments for waste paper. Most of the scrap automobile recycling and dismantling enterprises do not have a formal assembly line and equipment, and large-scale waste steel and iron Disintegration still uses oxygen cutting and hammering; waste non-ferrous metal recycling and waste household appliances, computers and other precious metals containing gold, palladium, platinum, etc., are still generally used for acid leaching, fire and manual demolition, the process behind, secondary pollution is serious .

The second is that there is no market operating mechanism and companies are struggling. Recycling companies have weak market competitiveness, small scale businesses, decentralized operations, and poor mechanization, making it difficult to increase processing capacity. A considerable portion of renewable energy companies suffered losses. In 2000, a total of 40 million tons of scrap steel was recovered, 160,000 recycling companies and outlets, and the average recycling volume per outlet and enterprise was only 250 tons per year. These enterprises were recovering, processing, managing, and storing. In the links of transportation and so on, each system has no connection with each other. Due to the inability to form a group or scale operation, the renewable resources industry has a low ability to withstand risks. So far, there are few enterprise groups on the scale and scale of the entire industry, and the industry has developed at a low level.

The third is the lack of various types of industry standards and regulations. At present, China has no classification criteria and technical specifications for waste materials, and there are no production technology standards for various types of renewable resources. The existing waste steel classification standards and non-ferrous metal classification standards cannot be implemented due to management issues and technical process problems and cannot be integrated with international standards. In the processing standards of waste paper, the quality of recycled paper cannot be guaranteed because there is no uniform quality standard for classification and reproduction. China's renewable resources industry has so far not had a regulation for the recycling of renewable resources, which has led to the lack of corresponding legal basis for the management of renewable resources. This has led to a serious disorder in the material recycling industry. Some operators have taken illicit tax evasion and other unfair measures. Business operation has caused some formal enterprises to be greatly impacted.

Fourth, the supervision and management of business licenses in special industries have been cancelled, causing vicious competition. At the end of last year, the State Council issued the "Decision of the State Council on Cancelling the First Batch of Administrative Examination and Approval Projects" (Gufa [2002] No. 24) document, canceled the special industry license of waste metal acquisition enterprises of the Ministry of Public Security and scrapped automobile recycling (disassembled) enterprises. Industry license, at the same time canceled the relevant state departments scrapped car recycling and dismantling enterprise qualification certification. After the cancellation of the approval of special industries, it caused chaos in the recycling industry of waste materials and the recycling and dismantling industry of end-of-life vehicles. Waste material recycling companies “flower everywhere”. They have no licenses, no licenses to operate, illegal purchases, and drive up prices. The vicious competition is fierce. The more companies that have become legal, law-abiding and normative in the industry, the more they lose money, forcing the prices of recovered resources to rise.

Fifth, lack of financial support. As China's technology investment in renewable resources industry is obviously insufficient, especially in recent years due to lack of investment, the aging of enterprise machinery and equipment, new equipment is incapable of launching, and a large number of scientific research projects are difficult to carry out, which affects the improvement of the industry's technological level. Even successful scientific research results are difficult to promote in the entire industry due to the lack of corresponding supporting funds.