According to the Department of Resource Conservation and Environmental Protection of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the plan for establishing and implementing the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system is currently under review, and a comprehensive implementation plan may be released this year. Meanwhile, addressing the difficulty of standardized recycling, the NDRC is also expediting the drafting of a circular economy leadership plan. This plan will start with top-level design, establishing recycling management methods, implementing the producer-led EPR system, and clarifying the specific rights and obligations of all participants, including producers, sellers, consumers, recyclers, reusers, and managers. Lead-acid batteries will be among the first to be included in this plan.
According to Cao Guoqing, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Battery Industry Association, the waste lead-acid battery recycling market has long been controlled by itinerant recyclers, resulting in a large amount of waste batteries flowing to illegal small-scale smelting operations. This leads to problems such as acid dumping pollution, unregulated flow of waste batteries causing further pollution, and tax revenue losses. In 2014, approximately 3.2 million tons of waste lead-acid batteries were generated, but the 30 licensed hazardous waste management units nationwide only recycled 272,000 tons, accounting for just 8.5%. The amount of acid dumped haphazardly through drilled holes in waste batteries exceeds 260,000 tons annually, causing severe lead pollution. If calculated based on 70% of the value-added tax, this represents an annual tax loss of approximately 2.7 billion yuan, urgently requiring the attention of government departments and the entire industry.
"Taking the US lead-acid battery industry as an example, it accounts for over 95% of the total lead consumption in the US. However, thanks to sound regulations and effective management, lead emissions from lead-acid battery production account for only 1.5% of the total US emissions," said Zhang Tianren, Chairman of Tianneng Group. He suggested that, on the one hand, a differentiated tax policy should be implemented, with full refunds of battery consumption tax for compliant manufacturers to implement extended producer responsibility and better promote the recycling of waste lead-acid batteries in my country; policy support should not be given to battery companies that operate illegally, engage in non-standard recycling operations, or fail to meet environmental standards. On the other hand, the supervision of lead-acid battery recycling should be strengthened by utilizing "Internet of Things+" technology to build a big data supervision platform for the entire life cycle of lead-acid batteries. Regulatory authorities can quickly grasp the flow and data of waste batteries through the Internet of Things technology platform, conduct supervision of lead recycling and smelting, and focus on cracking down on illegal industrial chain activities.
Li Yanping, a researcher at the Cleaner Production and Circular Economy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, stated that the implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system will comprehensively define the responsibilities of various stakeholders and classify the types of responsibilities along the green supply chain. For the lead-related industry, a number of typical green supply chain cases will be selected through methods such as pollution control throughout the entire process, market mechanisms for environmental supervision, industrial structure optimization, and transformation and upgrading. This will explore and establish a market-adapted green supply chain implementation model, build a green supply chain centered on environmental protection, promote green supply chain environmental management from the perspective of the entire product life cycle, and ultimately realize the green ecological footprint of my country's lead-related industry under the green supply chain.
