Why has the blue ocean in the waste recycling industry not been developed yet? | asia88bet slot, nomor keluar singapura hari ini 2020, situs bola terbesar

"Recycle old refrigerators, old color TVs, old washing machines..."

This slogan with a strong accent fixed the first impression of our generation on the waste industry. Then, people’s memory of the waste industry may be mountains of cardboard and plastic bottles stacked in recycling bins.

Waste recycling, an industry active in small towns, seems to have drifted away from the edge of modern life. But in fact, American journalist Adam Minter mentioned in his book "Waste Planet" that the annual turnover of the global recycling industry has reached 500 billion US dollars, which is approximately equal to the GDP of Norway. It is the industry with the largest number of employees in the world after agriculture.

Waste recycling is not as simple as we think.

"Every scrap in the world is for profit"

“Everything in the world is bustling for profit, and the world is bustling for profit.” Waste recovery and recycling is a long chain. The original motivation for people to do this is not environmental protection, but profit. Even the birth of waste has the shadow of capital behind it. The globalization of the waste recycling industry has become a permanent feature of the world economy, no different from the globalization of smartphone manufacturing, and its durability has not diminished.

1. Manufacturers’ pursuit of profit, the birth of “planned waste”

Generally speaking, waste products are born when the use value and commercial value of a product approach zero, which is the natural end of a product's life. But in reality, there is also the phenomenon of deliberately shortening the life of products, especially in the production of electronic waste. Many hardware manufacturers may bear most of the responsibility.

On the one hand, equipment manufacturers adopt a "planned obsolescence" strategy to shorten the life of electronic equipment in order to force users to upgrade to new equipment. Apple has admitted that the new version of iOS system will automatically limit the performance of the device, and users will have to replace it for a better experience.

On the other hand, shared bicycles are rampant, and idle or deliberately damaged bicycles have no choice but to flow through the industrial chain, becoming a "new capital" in the waste recycling industry. This year, a lot of scrap pieces made from shared bicycles appeared in many recycling stations in Changsha, including bicycles from Mobike, Haro, and ofo.

Due to the profit-seeking needs of manufacturers, "planned waste" began to appear, but the market lacked a confrontation mechanism, which made the problem of waste products more serious. The limited metal resources also make people nervous, such as coltan, which is needed for mobile phone antennas to receive Wi-Fi. Mineral deposits are not abundant. If the life of such metals in electronic devices is exhausted and cannot be recycled and processed well, people may need to spend more money to find replacements in the future.

2. Circular economy, the emergence and suspension of “waste trade”

In the 20 years from 1995 to 2016, China's annual garbage imports increased from 4.5 million tons to 46.58 million tons, a tenfold increase. Among them, China received 56% of the world’s exported waste in 2016 alone. Here, "foreign garbage”In fact, it is regarded as a "foreign resource". This resource regeneration method is also an inevitable choice for the development of circular economy.

However, in the face of tens of millions of tons of "foreign garbage", the country is not fully prepared. China's garbage recycling industry is obviously not mature enough in terms of supervision and sorting. Improperly handled "foreign garbage" has caused public dissatisfaction. It was not until 2017 that the ban on the entry of foreign garbage was introduced, and people's verbal and written criticism of "foreign garbage" came to an end. In fact, whether it is the "dumping" conspiracy of "foreign garbage" or China's responsibility as a great power, in the final analysis, the domestic market's demand for raw materials is the ultimate judge. Once there is no need for recycled materials, waste sorting and recycling will become an act of peace of mind.

In the long term, the ultimate goal of the ban is undoubtedly to increase the recycling rate of domestic solid waste, and even force the introduction of front-end waste classification to promote the development of a circular economy. Taking the waste plastics industry as an example, China's annual import volume of waste plastics has soared from 300,000 tons in 1992 to 7.34 million tons in 2016. After the "foreign garbage" seal is sealed, China's waste plastics companies have a raw material gap of millions of tons every year, which needs to be filled through the domestic waste classification and solid waste recycling system.

In the second half of garbage collection, it still remains on the surface of storytelling

Compared with foreign waste material recycling industries, the domestic renewable resources industry is still in the market-oriented growth stage, showing a stable and improving development trend. According to relevant data, as of the first half of 2018, there were more than 5,000 companies engaged in the recycling of renewable resources, more than 3,000 recycling processing plants, about 1.4 million employees, and about 160,000 online stores across the country. By the end of 2017, the total recycling value of my country's top ten types of renewable resources had reached 755.07 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.7%.

Today, the industrial chain of the domestic waste industry has been basically opened up, including front-end classification, site recycling, recycling processing plants and other levels. The whistle has been blown in the waste recycling industry. At the front end of recycling, the "smart recycling box" model is the most common, which uses unmanned intelligent terminals to sort and recycle items into whole pieces in the form of classified recycling cabinets, garbage bins, and garbage kiosks. The intelligent renewable resource classification and recycling platforms "Little Yellow Dog", "Classify Together" and "I Love Collection" are industry representatives.

After recycling, there are also corresponding manufacturers on the processing side. Paper giant Nine Dragons Paper Co., Ltd. invested heavily in environmental protection facilities in the early stages of building the factory and has unique advantages in waste paper processing. After more than ten years of development, Hunan's Wanrong Technology has established an industrial line of "high-priced metal recycling", "urban mineral development" and "urban and rural solid waste resource utilization", and has also achieved good results. Finally, garment factories and plastic product factories upstream and downstream of the waste recycling industry can also basically absorb raw materials from processing plants.

However, behind the beautiful stories, there are still certain hidden dangers.

In the Pearl River Delta, the monthly salary of professional recycling workers is nearly 10,000 yuan. The reason why it is higher than that of ordinary salaried workers is that, on the one hand, the cost of waste recyclingThe working environment is poor, and some wastewater and gas will be emitted during the recycling and manufacturing process. In the absence of supervision, pollution is even more unpredictable, which will affect the physical health of workers. On the other hand, this type of work is more professional than outsiders imagine. Before suitable machines were invented (there is currently no equipment that can fully automate garbage classification), a lot of work relied on manual work - plastic bottles of different colors need to be sorted, and bottle mouths and bottles of different materials need to be separated.

In addition, the sources of raw materials for waste recycling companies are complex, and most of them purchase waste materials from numerous self-employed individuals. This recycling method accounts for more than 80% of the total recycling volume. The problem with this recycling method is that it is difficult for recycling companies to obtain input VAT deductions, resulting in an excessive tax burden. Another impact is that there are many "retail investors" in the recycling process. These retail investors do not need to pay taxes, but they purchase waste materials from waste producers under two price systems: "with fare" and "no fare". While making profits from this, it also limits the living space of formal recycling companies.

"Top-heavy", technology is the "reassurance"

Today's waste recycling industry is still in a period of stragglers, with obvious characteristics of small, scattered, and poor quality. Extensive management has greatly weakened the ability of traditional recycling companies and practitioners to withstand risks. To forge iron, you need to be strong yourself. If you want to build a company's moat, you must continue to make efforts in technology.

In the waste recycling industry, classification and recycling are the leading links in the industrial chain, and the classification of residents is at the forefront. How to get residents to cooperate with classification? Numerous companies offer their own technology solutions. Take the "Little Yellow Dog" mentioned above as an example. Its recycling machine is equipped with technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud services, and real-time payment systems. It not only realizes intelligent recycling, but also allows residents to sell waste online and withdraw cash; platforms represented by "Classify Together" It has set up an online mall service, and the environmental protection points awarded can be directly consumed in the online mall; Shenzhen's "Youfumeijia" is committed to developing a garbage classification APP, and cooperates with nearly 10 volunteer associations to encourage residents to replace waste in the form of "points for gifts".

With the improvement of environmental protection concepts and material technology, the industry has begun to tilt towards the tail end of "sales", and the "top-heavy" norm has changed. In other words, sorting and recycling is no longer the only key to the industry, but the sale and use of recycled materials. Design studio Gomi recently made a Bluetooth speaker. Its colorful marble-effect body is made of 100 non-recyclable flexible plastic products. The product has been praised by many environmentalists since its launch.

In a "top-heavy" industry, technology is far from empowering the "foot links". For example, when a designer wants to use recycled materials to design, he needs to answer many questions, such as the cleanliness, type, size, molding method and other parameters of the material. But in fact, designers don't know the answers.

In this regard, manufacturersIt is necessary to continuously strengthen the labels of "marketing" and "information" and make the entrance layout of mobile applications, which is user-oriented, that is, the demand solution route. After all, platformization is the guarantee of normal transactions. IBM has an "intelligent waste management platform" that allows users to quickly and automatically organize the information involved in the waste management process.

In addition, the establishment of recycling industrial parks is also a good ecological solution. In this regard, Anhui, Hunan, Heilongjiang and other provinces have made efforts. Taking Hunan Province as an example, Wanrong has connected the upstream and downstream industries of solid waste resources, electronic waste, plastics and other industries in Miluo, Yueyang. The throughput of the Miluo recycling industrial park established is very huge, and the processing capacity of used household appliances alone has reached 2.8 million units per year.

In general, the waste recycling industry is an industry that is underestimated by society, but with the continuous progress of social life, the development of the waste recycling industry will get better and better. Of course, there are still some "reefs" under this blue ocean, and using technology to crush them is undoubtedly a good way out.

[Source: Intelligent Relativity Author: Yan Xuan]