95.77 Million Tons of Low‑Value Waste – and Just 26.6% Gets Recycled. How Do We Speed That Up?

In daily life, not all "recyclables" hold high recovery value. Items such as plastic bags, woven bags, food packaging films, composite packaging, and various plastic products—including PE, PP, PS, and PET—along with mixed recyclables that are complex in composition and contain high levels of impurities, are often collectively referred to as "low-value waste" or "low-value recyclables" due to their low unit value, high collection and transportation costs, and intensive labor requirements for manual sorting.

There remains significant room to improve the recovery rate of low-value recyclables.

According to the China Low-Value Recyclables Recycling and Utilization Status Report, in 2021, China generated approximately 95.77 million tons of low-value recyclables (excluding bulky waste), with about 25.47 million tons recovered, representing a total recovery rate of approximately 26.6%. Roughly 70 million tons were mixed into municipal solid waste and incinerated or landfilled—significantly lower than the average recovery and utilization rate of over 75% for major renewable resources in China.

Although some materials in low-value household waste have recyclable properties, the industry has historically relied on labor-intensive, coarse manual sorting methods. Faced with increasingly complex waste compositions, traditional approaches often suffer from insufficient sorting efficiency, high impurity content, and continuously rising labor costs. Some materials that appear resource-recoverable may still end up being incinerated or landfilled due to a lack of economically viable treatment pathways, resulting in resource waste.

Intelligent sorting is driving low-value waste from "rough sorting" toward "fine sorting."

The key to addressing this challenge lies in the transition from rough to fine sorting. With the gradual improvement of intelligent sorting equipment and the "point–station–center" collection network, the integration of the two networks (waste classification and renewable resource recovery) is further linking the classification system with the recycling system.

Resource recovery centers employ bag breaking, primary screening, 3D sorting, magnetic separation, eddy current separation, and AI-powered visual recognition to achieve multi-stage separation of mixed waste. Low-value recyclables can be identified, separated, and centrally processed with greater precision, improving both sorting efficiency and material purity—laying a solid foundation for subsequent processing and resource utilization.

For low-value recyclables, fine sorting is not merely about "recovering a bit more." It is also about reducing unit treatment costs through scale and automation, enabling materials that previously lacked economic viability to enter the secondary resource market.

Policy support continues to create space for low-value recyclable resource recovery.

The policy environment is also creating more room for this industrial model. In July 2026, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for Circular Economy Development, setting targets for 2030: annual recycling volume of major renewable resources to reach 510 million tons, and the output value of the resource recycling industry to reach 8 trillion yuan—providing strong policy backing for further development of the renewable resource recycling sector.

At the local level, in April 2026, Guangzhou city issued the Guangzhou Measures for Purchasing Low-Value Recyclables Recycling and Treatment Services, which specifies that funding for such services shall be allocated at a ratio of 70% from the municipal budget and 30% from district budgets. Through joint government procurement and streamlined payment processes, the policy encourages private capital to participate in low-value recyclables recycling and treatment, further advancing the development of the waste recycling system.

The resource recovery of low-value waste is accelerating toward industrialization.

In this context, the profit model for low-value recyclables treatment is gradually shifting from the traditional "waste collection" approach toward deep-processing value addition. By improving sorting efficiency, reducing treatment costs, and enhancing the purity of recycled raw materials, materials with low original recovery value can unlock greater resource potential. At the same time, as green, low-carbon development and circular resource systems continue to improve, sorting and recycling may gain greater support from policy, market demand, and carbon value mechanisms.

For enterprises, those who can further improve sorting efficiency, reduce overall treatment costs, and consistently deliver high-purity recycled raw materials will be better positioned to gain a competitive edge in the emerging wave of low-value recyclable resource recovery.