International meeting on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling and treatment & extended producer responsibility (EPR) 2017 was convened in Beijing on May 24, 2017. The meeting brought together industry experts and leading enterprises at home and abroad to share their best practices and explore the future of WEEE recycling and treatment. The 2016 Whitepaper on China’s WEEE Recycling, Treatment and Reuse was released at this meeting.
Carried out nationwide, China's EPR plan, released by the State Council in 2016, included electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in the first version of its catalogue. Changhong, Gree and TCL joined the EPR pilot program and have achieved great results.
Year 2016 marked the first year after the release of China's new subsidy standards, and the fifth year after the implementation of China’s WEEE fund system. According to the newly released white paper, 2.61 billion Yuan has been collected from producers as fund, yet 4.714 billion Yuan allocated to recycling and treatment operators as subsidy in 2016. With policy advantages, treatment sector has its issues to face. This sector has seen the fund system in deficit and witnessed long cycles of receiving the fund. Under this circumstance, treatment enterprises are dividing. Around thirty percent of them suspend their operation while big ones remain resilient under pressure.
The white paper covers the following: management systems, latest policies, industry development,theoretical quantity of scrappage, data and analysis, treatment techniques, achievements, best practices, advanced technologies and the people.
According to it, the recycling and treatment sector has seen a steady rise in the past 2016 with waste mobile phones as the hottest items. The sector is still dominated by individual operators, whose processed quantity accounts for 90% of all. Affected by price rises and increased costs of transportation and labor, the recycling and treatment cost has remained high compared to the cost 15 years ago. This, coupled with the division of operators, becomes one of the issues this industry is set to deal with.