China publicizes its major home appliance manufacturers’ efforts to fulfill responsibility for end-of-life appliance collection 
On March 25, China’s National Development and Reform Commission hosted an online conference on the implementation of the country’s “end-of-life home appliance collection targets and responsibility system”.
In the conference, government bodies, experts and representative companies communicated their opinions on the implementation of the system and reporting in the system. At the time of the conference, six major home appliance manufacturers — Haier, Gree, TCL, Changhong, Midea and Hisense — have participated in the system’s implementation program. They showed their efforts to implement their targets and responsibilities for end-of-life appliance collection.
In August 2021, to promote home appliance recycling, China’s government issued a circular that encourages appliance manufacturers to implement the system where they set targets and perform their responsibilities for end-of-life home appliance collection. The circular sets out the goal of nurturing model companies for the system by 2023.
The manufacturers’ efforts to implement the system
- Haier aims to build home appliance dismantling facilities that can process a total of 2 million end-of-life products per year and establish a nationwide collection network by the end of 2022.
- Gree will continue its trade-in campaign to promote sales by encouraging customers to replace their old home appliances. It aims to build its own reverse logistics recycling system and develop innovative recycling models.
- TCL has set two types of targets, namely targets achieved through the “cooperative channel” and “self-built channel”. In the cooperative channel, recycling is done through society while in the self-built channel it is performed by TCL’s dismantling services.
- Changhong has set specific targets for its dismantling capacity for television sets and air conditioners. It plans to improve its artificial intelligence used for end-of-life appliance recycling as well as improving its recycling efficiency.
- Midea aims to develop a complete end-of-life appliance collection system using digital models that can collect, dismantle and recycle the internal and external parts of home appliances.
- Hisense will determine when customers need to replace their old home appliances by managing and analyzing data of customers’ appliance use.
The National Development and Reform Commission’s social media post on the conference (in Chinese) is available at
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0pHSRprbdIE4nLUqKO-Rnw
