This is the English edition. The article body below is the publisher's English rendering of the original Chinese article; figures, license numbers and institutional names follow the original.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment has issued the environmental standard Technical Specification for Pollution Control on Processing of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (HJ 527—2026), effective from March 1, 2026, fully replacing the 2010 edition.

Four Core Changes in the Revision

  • Expanded categories of waste appliances: servers and service terminals (government self-service kiosks, retail self-checkout machines, etc.), smart consumer devices (smart unmanned aerial vehicles, wearable smart devices, smart in-vehicle devices, etc.), and medical service devices (excluding implantable, infectious, and radioactive equipment) are brought under control for the first time.
  • Refined storage requirements: zoned storage, protective measures, and other requirements are specified for different categories of waste appliances and their dismantled outputs.
  • Improved dismantling requirements: differentiated dismantling technical requirements are set for different categories, with stronger prevention of hazardous substance releases.
  • Stronger output management: pollution control requirements for utilization and disposal are set by dismantled output category.

What It Means for Processing Enterprises

The revision is oriented around "output management at the core": compliance depends not only on the intake stage but also on where dismantled outputs go and how they are utilized or disposed of. For enterprises holding a WEEE Processing License, this means storage zoning, dismantling process parameters, and output ledgers all need to be re-benchmarked against the new standard.

Meanwhile, servers and smart consumer devices are brought under control for the first time, covering exactly the two hardest-to-dispose categories in enterprise IT asset refresh cycles — retired servers and bulk-discarded smart terminals.

How Clients Can Use This Standard to Screen Providers

Once the standard takes effect, provider comparison can move beyond certificates to three concrete questions:

  • How are storage zones divided — the new standard sets zoned storage and protection requirements separately by waste appliance category and dismantled output. Ask the provider to explain the temporary storage areas and protective measures for servers, smart consumer devices, and medical service devices respectively.
  • How far does the output ledger go — the new standard puts the management focus on outputs. Ask: are the category, weight, and destination of dismantled outputs registered batch by batch, and can they be traced back by work order number?
  • Are the new categories within the approved scope — servers and smart consumer devices are newly covered by the standard, but "covered by the standard" does not mean "within the categories approved on the enterprise's processing license." Check the categories listed on the license before commissioning.

The value of these three questions is that they can all be verified, rather than relying on the provider's self-description of capability.

How It Differs from the Other Two Standards

More than one standard applies to e-waste disposal, and they are easy to confuse. Each of the three standards governs a different segment:

  • HJ 527 — governs pollution control in the dismantling and processing stage, answering "what must not be polluted during dismantling."
  • GB 18597 — governs hazardous waste storage, answering "how to store the hazardous waste generated by dismantling."
  • GB 46864 — governs information sanitization, answering "how to wipe the data on hard drives."

When clients review a provider, requesting materials for each of these three segments is more revealing than a vague question about "qualifications." The three standards carry different edition years, so cite the full year designation to avoid confusion with older versions or other industry standards.

Source

Q&A with the official in charge at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment's Department of Solid Waste and Chemicals: mee.gov.cn; Xinhua News Agency report: reposted on the MOJ Legal Publicity website.