How to recycle the small waste household appliances in China? A revenue- expenditure analysis

Along with rising household incomes and living standards globally, quantities of high-value small waste household appliances (SWHAs) that generate highly detrimental e-waste are rapidly burgeoning each year. Currently, China's regulations and policies related to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) cover just five types of large-scale appliances. Thus, the country's resource recovery industry remains undeveloped, because of the lack of practical experience of SWHAs recycling and associated policies. For this study, we developed a revenue-expenditure analytical model using five illustrative types of SWHAs to calculate the total expenditures and revenues of SWHAs recycling. Subsequently, we analyzed the recycling potential of SWHAs under different collection scenarios after incorporating subsidies and tax reductions. The results indicated that in the absence of economic policies, recycling enterprises demonstrated a perpetual deficit regardless of who took the lead in e-waste collection. Tax reductions, alone, were insufficient for reducing the total expenditures. Consequently, alternative strategies introduced by recycling enterprises were considered necessary. Under different scenarios of producer-led, government-led, and recycling enterprise-led collection, the subsidies required for recycling industries ranged between 472 and 927 million dollars. Sensitivity analysis revealed that material prices and collection quantities were positively correlated with net profit (NP), indicating that the government should consider subsidizing enterprises from the outset to ensure their viability. When the scale of collection expanded sufficiently, government subsidies were no longer required and enterprises were able to operate autonomously.