Recycling of used home appliances presents two difficulties

He is full, my car is still empty...

"Water heaters have been used for several years. I really don't know where to recycle." For citizens, when they need to deal with old appliances, they often feel guilty. For peddlers who sell goods to street vendors, the most direct feeling of the public is that they cannot receive a few dollars, and they are even less sensible about the final flow.

For the recycling and disposal center for waste electrical and electronic products of Guiyang Material Recycling Company, this often means the first step in the dismantling of used household appliances.

Market Research: Appliance Recovery Shows "Difficulty" Situation

At about 1:30 pm on October 22, Hu Rong who lives in Shaanxi Road, holding an oxygen generator, came to the secondary home appliance recycling market at Jinshapo Park North Road. As a result, the owners of a few stores full of air conditioners, televisions, and washing machines were not interested in oxygen generators. Helplessly, Hu Rong moved the oxygen concentrator to the trading lane opposite to the talent market in Guiyang City, Yan'an Middle Road. After several rounds of inquiries, the price of 250 yuan was spent on the oxygen concentrator that was bought for 1600 yuan a few months ago. Now.

In June of this year, Hu Rong bought the oxygen generator because of the oxygen she had just born. It took no more than 10 days to use it. She only plans to take a shot when she is idle. Before her home, she had a 28-inch color TV set sold to door-to-door hawkers and sold only a few tens of dollars because she couldn't bear to be a new oxygen generator. She decided to try it on the second-hand household appliance market. “No way. I don't know where else to recycle."

With the improvement of people's living standards and the acceleration of the upgrading of home appliances, Hu Rong’s experience is very common among the citizens. However, as the public is guilty of handling old and discarded home appliances, the only company in the city that specializes in the recycling of waste electrical and electronic products—the recycling and disposal center for waste electrical and electronic products at the Guiyang City Material Recycling Company in the Economic Development Zone—has received no income. To enough waste appliances. Since 2010, the center that handles 500,000 units per year has handled only 600,000 waste electrical appliances, of which about 30% are from other cities. According to the survey conducted by the Municipal Recycling Resources Industry Association, Guiyang City now produces about 1 million sets of various types of waste electrical and electronic products each year. Products include televisions, refrigerators, and mobile phones, drinking fountains, printers, and microwave ovens.

Wu Guichuan, Deputy Manager of Material Recycling Co., Ltd. and secretary of the processing center branch introduced that after the processing center was established in August 2010, it was determined by the provincial government as a “new-for-new” dismantling enterprise for home appliances, and in 2012 it was approved for disposal of waste electrical and electronic products in Guizhou Province. Qualification of enterprises, "There are only 100 qualified people in China, only two in Guizhou Province and one in Zunyi."

It is understood that since its establishment, almost 100% of the glass TVs in Guiyang are currently being dismantled at the center. Because computers have a high renovation rate, only 20% of them are processed by the center, and LCD TVs, air conditioners, and washing machines are distributed to the center. Refrigerators are rare. “At present, more than half of the waste household appliances in Guiyang City have not entered the formal dismantling channel,” said Qi Guichuan.

Dismantling without authorization: The heavy metals may pollute the environment

Speaking of the whereabouts of used home appliances, Luo Dingyong, owner of a renewable resource green recycling station on Guiwu Road, said: “A lot of hawkers who walked down the street took it.”

“A washing machine is heavy and big. It can only sell for tens of dollars. It is not worthwhile to find a car to pull us here. It is not worth it.” Luo Dingyong said that sometimes people call him to let him come in and collect. , but he is basically the same as the vendor. Moreover, to get what they sell is basically a household appliance that meets the end-of-life standards. It can only be dismantled, and some of the people who can use it will get the second-hand market in Jinshapo and Touqiao to sell.

In addition to these two situations, sometimes hawkers collect used household appliances and they directly dismantled them to get the recycling station to sell, or they dismantled and sold the big buyers. Taking a washing machine as an example, the price given by Luo Dingyong is generally 70-80 yuan, but after the dismantling, “iron is iron, copper is copper, aluminum is aluminum, and plastic can also be sold. Generally, it can be sold for one or two times more. "Block money." So, the hawkers are particularly keen to dismantle their home appliances.

"There are heavy metals in electrical and electronic products." According to Guichuan Gui, as long as it is an electrical appliance, there are integrated circuit boards that can extract precious metals such as gold, copper, platinum, palladium, rhodium, cobalt, etc. Glass TVs also contain lead and mercury. There are waste engine oils in air conditioners. There used to be Freon refrigerants. Therefore, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and other departments stipulated that dismantling and classification of used household appliances must be carried out by regular companies. After that, recycling resources such as metals and plastics were recovered. Utilization, hazardous wastes are handed over to downstream qualified companies. However, in some parts of China, there have been numerous manual workshops for dismantling waste electrical and electronic products, and precious metals have been refined through open burning and strong acid soaking. In this process, waste water, waste gas, and waste residues that were discharged at random have been seriously polluted. surroundings.

Industry insiders: expect the government to increase support for formal recycling companies

If you want to eliminate hawkers unauthorized dismantling of electrical appliances, waste household appliances processing center must recycle used appliances from the source. In this regard, Qi Guichuan said: The difficulties are great and they are powerless.

On the one hand, the processing center's own vehicles cannot enter the city, nor can it enter the community. On the other hand, after the processing center receives the dismantling and regular disposal of the waste household appliances, it can recover some of the metals, plastics, etc., and sell it to other recycling companies, while the hazardous wastes are paid to the qualified companies for processing. This is done in addition to the recyclable resources. In that part, the processing center must have capital investment. Although the state has subsidies, as a basic unprofitable enterprise, there is not much money left for recycling. The recycling price may be slightly lower than that of hawkers. Not attractive.

The subsidies mentioned by Min Guichuan mean that after the six departments of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the Administrative Measures for the Collection and Use of Waste Electrical and Electronic Product Handling Funds in 2012, the state finances dispose of the waste electrical appliances according to the actual disposal of the enterprises. The amount of electronic products is given a fixed amount of subsidies - 85 yuan for televisions, 80 yuan for refrigerators, 35 yuan for washing machines, 35 yuan for air conditioners, and 85 yuan for microcomputers.

As China currently only subsidizes five types of electronic products such as televisions, the recycling and disposal center for waste electrical and electronic products of Guiyang Material Recycling Company will only recycle these five types of products. However, according to the information obtained by Min Guichuan, starting next year, mobile phones, office appliances, and small home appliances are also expected to be included in the list of state subsidies.

As Guiyang City, a state-owned enterprise that specializes in the recovery of renewable resources, Min Guichuan said that although it has been swinging the bottom line, the processing center will insist.

Speaking of ways to change the status quo, he cited the example of two or three dismantling plants in Shanghai, but in addition to state subsidies, Shanghai Finance also provided financial support of more than 10 million yuan per plant each year, so the dismantling plant can have higher The recycling of used home appliances at a price has achieved a virtuous circle, and he hopes that local matching funds in Guiyang can keep up.

In order to facilitate the public, Geng Guichuan also hopes that the government can open green channels for the handling of vehicles in the center and provide policy support for entering the sector. In addition, he hopes that the government departments will increase publicity efforts to let Guiyang citizens know the disposal mechanism of used household appliances. There is such a processing center, knowing why the processing center gives a relatively low price. "If a mandatory regulation cannot be introduced within a certain period of time, similar publicity is necessary," he said.