New Guidelines Highlight Smarter Processing of 8 Recyclables

On January 25, Guidelines on Propelling Development of Renewable Energy Industry was jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. The guidelines call for processing 350 million tons per year of recyclable waste by 2020, establishing better industrial criteria, making breakthroughs in key technologies and setting up a number of very competitive enterprises.
Many targets are set for eight major areas – scrap steel, scrap non-ferrous metals, waste plastics, waste paper, discarded tires, waste electronic products, scrap motor vehicles and waste textiles.
* Waste plastics: China is to recycle 23 million tons per year of waste plastics by 2020
Industry players are to establish a recycling system for diversified and efficient utilization of waste plastics. For key varieties of waste plastics that exist in large quantity and are highly recyclable, demonstration projects are to be started, and efficient production lines integrating the processes of crushing, sorting, modifying and pelleting are to be developed. Recycling of low-quality waste plastics that easily pollute the environment and household waste plastics will not be ignored.
* Junked tires: China is to recycle 8.5 million tons per year of junked tires by 2020, with a tire retreading rate of 8% to 10%
Industry players are to develop tire retreading technologies and ensure product quality through strict supervision. In addition, attention will be paid to rubber powder made of junked tires, new types of environment-friendly reclaimed rubber and techniques for thermal cracking.
* Waste textiles: China is to recycle 9 million tons per year of waste textiles by 2020
Industry players are to establish a recycling system for waste textiles and develop efficient production technologies that recycle waste bottle chips with either physical methods or chemical methods. Breakthroughs will be made in pretreatment and separation technologies for waste textiles. Furthermore, industry players are encouraged to utilize waste textiles and waste bottle chips to produce yarns, filaments, short fibers, building materials, municipal materials and auto interior materials.
China recycled around 246 million tons of major renewable resources in 2015, worth RMB1.3 trillion.
The guidelines set out 10 types of pilot demonstration projects. Among them, waste plastic high-quality utilization projects are to highlight R&D on automatic identification, sorting and secondary pollution control technologies. R&D focuses of waste rubber clean-using demonstration projects are green, intelligent equipment, thermal cracking equipment and negative-pressure cracking technologies.