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.

What dispersed actually means

Large appliances benefit from a delivery step: when a new unit arrives, the old one leaves on the same truck, so collection happens as a by-product. Small appliances have no such moment. When a rice cooker, hairdryer or router fails, the household has to find somewhere to put it, and all too often it goes into the general waste bin.

Dispersion has three consequences. Collection cost is high, because a trip per unit costs more in fuel than the material is worth. Categories are mixed, with plastic, metal and circuit boards arriving in one bag that must be sorted by hand. And data risk gets ignored, since phones and routers are frequently passed on without their accounts wiped.

Value and cost run in opposite directions

A small appliance contains limited metal, so the recovered material is worth little, while collection, transport and sorting costs are fixed. Single-unit recycling does not work commercially; only batch consolidation dilutes the cost.

Phones are the exception. Their mainboards carry high precious-metal grades, so a single unit can support a dedicated chain, provided the supply is genuine and arrives in quantity. Routers sit between the two: the board has some value, the plastic housing dominates by weight, and a single unit is worth nothing while a batch is worthwhile.

Three workable collection routes

  • Community drop-off — fixed bins at residents' committees, property management offices or recycling points, cleared monthly.
  • Organisational batch handover — companies, agencies and schools accumulate retired devices and commission disposal as one lot.
  • Trade-in bundling — a discount on a new purchase collects the old unit through the existing sales network.

All three turn scattered units into batches. A collection point needs no dismantling capability; it needs only segregated storage, a count register and scheduled transfer. Everything after that belongs to a licensed dismantler.

Phones and routers: wipe data first

The value in these devices is the board; the risk is the storage. A phone holds contacts, photographs and payment credentials. A router holds broadband account details, wireless passwords and internal network configuration. If data is not removed before the device leaves, leakage remains possible whether it is dismantled or resold.

The workable practice is a factory reset plus account unbinding before handover, and for organisational assets a recorded serial number and erasure log as well. There is now a technical benchmark for the erasure itself: GB 46864-2025, the data security standard for information removal from electronic products, takes effect on 1 January 2027 and defines what must be removed and to what extent. A factory reset is only the first step within it. Where security requirements are high, skip resale entirely and go to physical destruction.

Different handling after collection

Small appliances are mostly plastic and thin steel, so dismantling focuses on separating materials and removing contaminants, with moderate recovery value. Phones and routers centre on circuit boards, so the work is board classification and component recovery before the precious-metal refining route. Boards cannot simply be sold on either: under the 2025 edition of the National Catalogue of Hazardous Wastes, waste circuit boards sit in HW49, other wastes, and only a holder of a hazardous waste operating licence may take them. A licence such as 1310250101 defines its approved scope down to collection, storage and utilisation as separate segments.

One further category needs marking: small appliances with built-in batteries. Cordless vacuums, electric toothbrushes and rechargeable lamps must have the cell removed before dismantling, or crushing can start a fire and compromise the whole load.

Practical notes

  • Segregate community collection points into three streams: with batteries, with screens, and everything else.
  • Count units and record serial numbers before organisational handover, and keep a one-page transfer list.
  • Reset and unbind phones and routers before delivery, and retain the erasure record.
  • Bag lithium-battery devices separately and never compress them together with metal scrap.
  • Use a licensed dismantler and obtain a disposal receipt so the batch does not drift into unlicensed hands.