During this year's two sessions, the government work report pointed out that the government's work tasks in 2024 should focus on expanding domestic demand, promote a virtuous cycle of the economy, and encourage and promote the replacement of old consumer goods with new ones.

Furniture and home appliances are durable consumer goods, and there is great demand and potential for replacement. If your home is replaced with new furniture and home appliances, what should you do with the old ones?

Give it away?

Selling junk?

Or do you have to throw it away?

What problems are you facing now when replacing old ones with new ones?

What are the problems faced by "replacement of old with new"?

　　Current recycling of home appliances and furniture

　　Mainly offline and mobile recycling

　　Recycling is important as a front-end support for trade-in.

On the recycling side, consumers in my country still mainly rely on offline recycling stations and mobile recycling points.

Qingdao resident Wang Hongju told reporters that she lives in an old community and used to go to mobile waste collectors.

　　Wang Hongju, a Qingdao resident: It’s very troublesome to drag it there by yourself, and there are also personal recycling. We don’t know those people very well, so we have to call them to come to collect, which is a bit concerning in terms of safety.

　　The small recycling stations located near the community mainly contain scattered old goods. On the one hand, the supply of recycled goods is unstable, and on the other hand, problems such as waste and pollution caused by some private demolitions also need to be solved urgently.

　　Difficulty in moving old furniture

　　Low added value of recycling

　　Renewal of large-scale furniture faces the problems of "difficulty in transportation, difficulty in processing, and low added value of recycling."

The reporter found that many consumers’ furniture “trade-in” issues are stuck in the disposal of old furniture.

　　Resident Ms. Chen: Sometimes I want to replace the furniture with new ones, but the thought of having to deal with the bed and sofa at home is too troublesome, so I keep putting it off.

　　Resident Mr. Jin: The main reason is that it is inconvenient to find someone, the furniture is too big, and the property management company cannot help with it. We have to find some companies, but the charging standards are uncertain.

　　Zhu Mingxing, the person in charge of the furniture recycling company: Our fees are mainly composed of three parts. The first part is the worker's transportation fee and disassembly and assembly fee, the second part is the transportation fee, and the other part is the garbage fee.

For example, we charge about 200 yuan for a 1.8-meter bed.

Like different regions, the price will be different because of the differences in transportation costs and labor costs.

　　The second-hand furniture market needs to build a one-stop platform

　　Zhu Mingxing said that they will also pay users for some quality and branded furniture, and then send these furniture to the second-hand market for resale.

The reporter visited and found that second-hand furniture made of solid wood and with certain collection value is relatively popular on the market.

In interviews, many merchants said that finding customers is a difficult problem.

On the one hand, consumers cannot get out the old furniture they have exchanged for new ones; on the other hand, it is difficult to tap the huge demand with the strength of a single merchant.

　　Tu Qi, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the China Furniture Association: We may need to open up the role of such a platform link, which can leverage some of the leading companies in our industry to create a recycling platform for the entire industry chain of the Internet of Things.

Where do old furniture and appliances go?

How to "regenerate"?

　　Not long ago, nine departments including the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued a notice clearly proposing to improve the recycling system of used household appliances and furniture, smooth the recycling of renewable resources, and improve the planning and layout of the recycling network.

Where should the recycled old furniture and appliances go and how to "recycle" them?

　　Recycling outlets at your doorstep

　　Promote the "rebirth" of resources

　　At the recycling outlet of Jinyayuan Community in Jiubao Street, Shangcheng District, Hangzhou City, resident Aunt Yang just handed over the used computer screens and old newspapers to the staff. After weighing and calculating the price, she was able to exchange the items for money.

Convenient services and transparent prices allow the outlets to receive thousands of "patronizations" every month.

　　Yang Liping, a resident of Jinyayuan Community, Jiubao Street, Shangcheng District, Hangzhou City: In the past, because there was no such place, we threw away more.

Now by giving it to them, on the one hand, we can get some money, which is convenient, and it also increases our environmental awareness.

　　After the renewable resources are packaged and sorted at the outlets, they will go to the next stop - the sorting center.

　　Efficient sorting

　　Renewable resources flow to downstream enterprises

　　In a renewable resources sorting center in Haidian District, Beijing, a two-story automated crushing equipment is in operation.

In 2023, 190,000 pieces of used sofas, tables and chairs and other large pieces of garbage will be sorted, dismantled and disposed of here.

The reporter saw at the scene that the steel materials in the furniture were being screened out through a magnetic separation system.

　　CCTV reporter Yang Yaoyu: These steel wires and the sawdust in my hand are broken and dismantled from these "big" pieces of furniture that are difficult to handle and use.

The staff told me that after this refined classification, the steel wire can be sent to downstream steel plants, and the wood chips can be sent to lumber plants for resource reuse.

One ton of wood chips can save 0.6 to 0.8 tons of virgin wood, and some non-recyclable waste wood, leather, and sponge mixtures can be sent to power plants for energy reuse.

　　Last year, the total amount of waste household appliances recycled nationwide reached 4.5 million tons.

　　According to statistics from relevant industry associations, in 2023, the total volume of waste household appliances recycled nationwide will reach 4.5 million tons, containing a large number of precious metals and plastics such as gold, silver, copper, and tin.

Data shows that for every ton of waste home appliances recycled, the dismantled renewable resources can reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide by approximately 4.7 tons.

However, currently, used household appliances are recycled through formal channels, and the proportion of environmentally friendly dismantling and recycling is only about 20%.

　　In Laixi, Shandong Province, the reporter visited the industry's first home appliance recycling interconnected factory that integrates "recycling-dismantling-regeneration-reuse".

For home appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, etc., the dismantled iron, aluminum, copper and some hard plastics are the most valuable parts.

　　Li Shiliang, General Manager of Haier Smart Home Recycling and Internet Factory: We will find our partners to directly recycle, re-melt and smelt it, and then apply it to different home appliances, achieving 100% recycling and reuse.

　　Yuan Qingdan, Vice President of the China Circular Economy Association: Now our country's formal home appliance processing capacity has reached a level of 170 million units per year, which should be the highest in the world.

We have calculated that if a household appliance is recycled, it can reduce more than 20 kilograms of carbon emissions.