The current situation of plastic waste recycling in China's electronic waste

China is a major producer and consumer of electronic and electrical products and equipment. According to statistics, the current social ownership of refrigerators in China has reached 120 million units, washing machines 170 million units, televisions 400 million units, and computers 80 million units. Most of the refrigerators, washing machines, and televisions that were put into use in the late 1980s and early 1990s have now reached their end-of-life. Especially for electronic information products, due to their fast upgrading and replacement, the cycle of updating and scrapping is shorter. It is expected that in recent years, at least 26 million computers, 32 million televisions, 15 million refrigerators, 17.6 million washing machines, 15 million air conditioners, and tens of millions of mobile phones will be scrapped annually in China. These electronic wastes contain a large amount of renewable plastics, which is actually a valuable and exploitable asset in the current situation of severe shortage of crude oil energy and high international oil prices.

However, due to the incomplete laws and regulations on electronic waste disposal in China, coupled with relatively weak environmental awareness among people, a large amount of electronic waste has been disposed of unreasonably, causing environmental pollution and serious waste of resources. At the Sino Japanese Forum on "Recycling and Reuse System Construction of Waste Electronic and Electrical Products" held on August 3, 2007, experts and scholars from the National People's Congress, the Ministry of Information Industry, China Electronics Engineering Design Institute, China Home Appliance Research Institute, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Tokyo University and other units fully discussed the recycling and reuse of renewable resources in waste electronic and electrical products.

It is estimated that the average weight ratio of plastic in computers and televisions is about 23% to 25%. At present, in the face of a large number of waste electronic and electrical products in China, it is common to dispose of them at will. Even if recycling is carried out, it is mainly in the form of "small workshops", and the dismantling method is still primitive manual operation. The dismantled parts are placed randomly. Many usable plastic products are simply processed or even discarded. Many waste products are also directly sent to landfills as garbage. Among these abandoned plastics, there is a large amount of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). PVC is one of the plastic varieties that seriously pollutes the environment and is harmful to human health. Once burned, it produces dioxins and furans, which have strong toxicity and carcinogenicity. Currently, PVC is no longer used as a raw material in many fields, and other polymer materials such as PE, PP, PU, ABS, etc. are used instead of PVC. Due to the much lower flame retardancy of most polymers compared to PVC, flame retardants are usually added to plastic formulations, typically organic compounds containing bromine elements such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and polybrominated biphenyls (PBB). These flame retardants can interfere with the human endocrine system and damage the nervous system. Therefore, improper handling of electronic waste can cause significant environmental pollution on one hand; On the other hand, a large amount of renewable plastics are discarded, which wastes valuable resources and is regrettable. On the contrary, in Japan, 380 standardized recycling and renewable factories for electronic waste have been built. Currently, the recycling rate of waste electronic and electrical products has reached 77% to 78%, and the cost of recycled products is only 1/10 of the cost of new products. This not only saves resources but also creates benefits.

In China, although there have been laws and regulations such as the "Management Measures for the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution Caused by Electronic Waste", the "Regulations on the Management of Recycling and Treatment of Waste Household Appliances and Electronic Products", and the "Draft Law on the Recycling and Utilization of Electronic Waste", there is still a lack of a unified circular economy law to support management. This makes it difficult to coordinate and solve many specific problems, and the waste recycling and utilization system is not perfect. This provides a soil for the existence of small workshop style treatment models in China to a large extent.

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