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.

In its interpretation of the notice on improving the recycling system for renewable resources such as used home appliances and furniture, the Ministry of Commerce's Circulation Development Department provided two widely cited industry estimates.

The Two Figures

  • According to industry association statistics, China's total recycling of used home appliances reached 4.5 million tons in 2023, containing substantial precious metals such as gold, silver, copper, and tin, along with plastics.
  • According to industry association statistics, every 1 ton of used home appliances recycled yields dismantled renewable resources that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about 4.7 tons.

How to Read "4.7 Tons"

The scope of this figure is "substitution effect": recycled metals and recycled plastics replace virgin materials, avoiding energy-intensive stages such as mining, smelting, and injection molding. It also explains why renewable resources recycling is included in the circular economy and "zero-waste city" policy frameworks — the carbon reduction contribution can be quantified.

The Value for Enterprises

For companies doing ESG disclosure or carbon audits, converting "commissioned compliant disposal of e-waste" into emission reductions is one of the few line items in the waste management chapter that can show a positive number. The precondition is that the processor can provide verifiable processing ledgers and disposal certificates.

Using Carbon Reduction Data Without Getting It Wrong

Figures like "recycling 1 ton of appliances avoids 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide" are lifecycle-perspective emission reduction estimates, with three boundaries to observe when citing them:

  • It is a substitution effect, not self-reduction — it measures the emissions avoided by "replacing virgin materials with recycled ones," not the disposal company's own carbon emission reduction.
  • It depends on estimation assumptions — different institutions use different values for grid emission factors, transport distances, and recycling rates, so results vary; citations should note the underlying standard or research method.
  • It cannot be counted directly into Scope 3 — whether reductions from commissioned disposal can be counted in a company's own Scope 3 emissions depends on the accounting standard and boundary setting, and should be confirmed with a carbon verification body.

In Jinye Environmental's zero-carbon factory roadmap, this kind of data is used for baseline calculations in the "scientific carbon accounting" stage; for clients, the safer use is as a qualitative statement on "circular economy practices" in an ESG report, presented alongside verifiable data such as disposal volumes and recycling rates.

Three Ways Enterprises Use This Data

  • ESG reports — as a quantitative illustration of circular economy practice, presented alongside disposal volumes and recycling rates.
  • Supplier evaluation — incorporating processors' resource recovery rates and compliance records into green procurement scoring.
  • Internal communication — turning "where did that old device go" into a tangible emissions-reduction story, which moves departments to cooperate more easily than abstract indicators.

The common precondition for all three uses is verifiable data: disposal volumes come from ledgers, recycling rates from dismantled output records, and emission factors from public estimation scopes. Without the first two, the reduction figure is merely a citation and cannot count as the company's own performance.

For recycling and processing providers, this data also has a reverse use: explaining to clients why the cost of compliant disposal cannot be measured against scrap-purchase prices. Every link — dismantling, sorting, detoxification, and resource recovery — carries real costs, while the emissions benefit accrues to society's overall ledger and does not directly become the processor's revenue. Once this is made clear, pricing disputes are usually halved.

Source

Interpretation by the Ministry of Commerce Circulation Development Department: Ministry of Commerce policy interpretation.