Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, January 09, 2004
China to face peak of scrapped household electric appliances
China has already approached a peak period for discarding household electric appliances. The State Development and Reform Commission recently with the approval of the State Council has made Zhejiang Province and Qingdao city in Shandong Province for trial establishment of recovery and treatment system for discarded household appliances and electronic products in the country. Meanwhile, departments concerned are drafting "Management Rules on the Recovery of Disused Household Appliances and Electronic Products."
China has already approached a peak period for discarding household electric appliances. The State Development and Reform Commission recently with the approval of the State Council has made Zhejiang Province and Qingdao city in Shandong Province for trial establishment of recovery and treatment system for discarded household appliances and electronic products in the country. Meanwhile, departments concerned are drafting "Management Rules on the Recovery of Disused Household Appliances and Electronic Products."
China witnessed a peak of scrapped household appliances in 2003. Now there is almost an average of four million refrigerators and five million washing machines and televisions discarded annually. Besides, there also sees a huge number of air conditioners and computers being frequently replaced.
The random recovery and backward demolition of scrapped household appliances often lead to serious waste of resources and environmental pollution and meanwhile incur safety problems for consumers who use those old appliances. First, isolated and incorrect demolition of the old household appliances only results in only taking away precious metals which are easy to recover, while a large amount of useful resources that are hard to recover are cast away or buried as garbage. Second, noxious substance in the scrapped household appliances cannot be specially treated. Particularly the "three wastes"-waste water, air and residue are discharged without any treatment thus harming the surrounding environment and health of the residents. Third, some sellers of old household appliances illegally assemble the components of old household appliances and cheat consumers with household appliances of poor-quality.