Waste Home Appliances: Diversified Development is the Key

In recent years, with the stimulation of policies such as replacement of home appliances, the number of used household appliances has increased, and the amount of used home appliances has continued to rise. In order to properly dispose of used household appliances, China promulgated the Regulations on the Management of the Recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Products on January 1, 2011, which stipulates that the five categories of used appliances for televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, and personal computers must be recycled according to law. . According to the 2012 White Paper on the Recycling and Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Electrical and Electronic Products, China's actual disposal of waste electrical and electronic products reached 5.633 million units in 2011, far exceeding the 19.17 million units in 2009.

Electronic waste contains a large amount of heavy metals and other toxic and harmful components, such as mercury, lead, chromium, cadmium, nickel and other metal elements and plastics, rubber and other chemical substances, if improper treatment will cause harm to the human body. At the same time, e-waste also contains a large number of renewable materials.

Most of the waste electrical and electronic products still flow into these individual recycling traders. Although there are so many old and waste household appliances, the initiative for the recycling of waste electrical and electronic products is still mainly in the hands of individual recyclers. Most of the waste electrical and electronic products still flow into these individuals. Recycling traders hands. Some people in the industry said: Green, environmental protection, supported by the national policy, before entering the industry many people want to be particularly good, only to find that after entering the gap between the imagination and imagination, may also lose their profits. Nowadays, the processing capabilities of some enterprises have not been completely released, and the overall design processing capacity is far greater than the actual scrapped electrical and electronic products.

Many home appliance companies in China have set up their own recycling companies. Such as TCL's Aobo has started production, Changhong construction of waste electronic and re-recycling production lines; Haier has established a base for waste household appliances. However, the current operating rate of more than 100 waste electrical appliance dismantling enterprises across the country is almost zero. “Not enough food” and “disassembling a single unit” have become the status quo in the industry.

Wanwei Home Grid understands that Panasonic announced on August 2, 2013 that the company and Tokyo Steel jointly launched a resource recycling business cooperation project, which will recycle the iron materials from used household appliances and smelt them into electric furnaces. The steel plate is then purchased back for use as a material for other products. Panasonic said that this is the first time that the “electric appliance industry” has implemented such a project. For Panasonic, this mechanism “can contribute to reducing procurement costs.”

For China's recycling mechanism for used home appliances, it is necessary to open up regular recycling channels and urgently need government agencies to take the lead. The government should encourage the diversification of the recycling of electronic products and support the recovery of waste electrical and electronic products from producers, sellers, maintenance organizations, after-sales service organizations, waste electrical and electronic product recovery entities, and waste electrical and electronic product processing companies. Although e-waste can be turned into waste, its dismantling process requires significant investment. At present, e-waste recycling and processing, the public welfare attribute is greater than the economic attribute, purely relying on market forces will not work.