The home appliance industry has been upgraded to "green" and its recycling has been strengthened.
Guided by the goal of carbon neutrality in peak carbon dioxide emissions, the green and low-carbon development of home appliance industry is surging. From promoting green and low-carbon consumption to building green factories, expanding the supply of green products, and then strengthening the recycling of waste household appliances, the home appliance industry is actively promoting green and low-carbon transformation from the whole industry chain.
Green smart home appliance market heats up.
In Beijing Suning Yijia Siyuanqiao Plaza Store, the home appliance intelligent interconnection experience zone is quite popular. "Intelligence and energy saving are closely linked." Chang Meng, manager of Beijing Suning Yijia Siyuanqiao Plaza Store, introduced that the green energy saving of home appliances lies in the whole use link. For example, after the intelligent interconnection design of home appliances is adopted, the mode of leaving home is selected on the mobile phone when going out, which avoids the situation of forgetting to turn off the air conditioner, so as to better realize energy saving and emission reduction.
In the home appliance replacement season, home appliance retailers actively carry out promotional activities to promote consumer demand. From March to December this year, Beijing issued "Jingcai Green" coupons to consumers in Beijing. The coupon applies to 55 categories of goods, including 16 categories of products such as notebook computers, televisions, washing machines and water heaters, and 4 categories of products such as dishwashers.
After the launch of this move, the market responded well. "Consumers have received a total of 140,000' Jingcai Green' coupons through the Suning.cn platform, driving sales to exceed 170 million yuan." The person in charge of Beijing Suning.cn said that the first round of coupons (from March 11th to 31st) led to a 30% year-on-year increase in the sales of green household appliances.
Jiang Feng, executive director of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, told reporters that last year, due to the impact of unexpected factors, the overall retail scale of the household electrical appliances market declined, but there were still many bright spots in industrial development. In 2022, around "trade-in" and "green intelligence", home appliance manufacturers and circulation enterprises made joint efforts to promote sales, and some green and smart home appliances grew at a higher rate.
Green consumption continues to heat up, which cannot be separated from the guidance and support of national policies. At the beginning of last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued the "Implementation Plan for Promoting Green Consumption", proposing to encourage and guide consumers to replace or purchase new household products such as green energy-saving appliances and environmentally-friendly furniture. Subsequently, the Ministry of Commerce and other 13 departments issued the "Notice on Several Measures to Promote the Consumption of Green Smart Household Appliances", proposing to fill the shortcomings and weaknesses of the household appliance market, open up the blocking points of household appliance consumption, meet the people's demand for upgrading the consumption of low-carbon, green, smart and fashionable household appliances, and meet the people's needs for a better life, and promote the development of household appliances and upstream and downstream related industries.
"Today's customers will make strategies in advance. If the price difference is not particularly large, they are still willing to choose products that are more energy-efficient and better to use." Chang Meng has been engaged in home appliance sales for nearly 10 years, and has a deep perception of the change of customers' green consumption concept. "Some customers are very honest. Although an energy-saving air conditioner is several hundred yuan expensive, it may take only one summer to get the difference back from the saved electricity bill. Why not buy a more energy-saving one?" Chang Meng said.
Building a Green Supply Chain
Household appliances are the second largest source of energy consumption for residents. Liu Ting, president of China Household Electrical Appliances Research Institute, believes that China is the largest household electrical appliance production base and consumer country in the world. Driven by the "double carbon" strategy, it is an inevitable choice for the household electrical appliance industry to strengthen technology and product innovation and accelerate the transformation to green and low carbon.
On July 1st, 2020, the new edition of Limited Value and Grade of Energy Efficiency of Room Air Conditioners (hereinafter referred to as "New Energy Efficiency Standard for Air Conditioning") was officially implemented. The first-class energy efficiency index in this edition of the standard has reached the international leading level.
"The implementation of the new energy efficiency standards for air conditioners has improved the energy efficiency level of the whole industry by more than 30%, which not only brought about the optimization and upgrading of technical routes, but also promoted the development of the home appliance industry from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of quality." Cheng Jianhong, a researcher at China National Institute of Standardization, said that from the perspective of product structure, the market share of inverter air conditioners has increased from the previous 50% to 98%, and the energy-saving and environmental protection effects have been greatly improved; From the perspective of industrial transformation, under stricter energy efficiency standards, enterprises have increased investment in scientific research, and the number of patented technologies has increased significantly.
From green products to green manufacturing, backbone enterprises of home appliances frequently make efforts. Midea Group innovated its design concept, merged redundant parts, minimized the use of screws, water pipes and other parts, and reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions from the source. Hisense Group has established 11 national-level "green factories", 1 national-level "green supply chain management demonstration enterprise" and 4 provincial-level "green factories", and the green manufacturing camp continues to expand.
Cheng Jianhong mentioned that while improving energy efficiency, how to accelerate the replacement of air-conditioning refrigerants requires the whole industry to overcome technical difficulties. "It is necessary to be energy efficient, green and environmentally friendly, and to ensure safety. There is still much room for research and development." Cheng Jianhong said.
Recycling has been strengthened.
"The window period for the large-scale upgrading of home appliances in China has been opened." Jiang Feng said that trade-in is an area that the home appliance industry needs to focus on in the future.
According to the data, about 100 million to 120 million used household appliances are eliminated every year in China, with an average annual increase of 20%. However, the standardized recycling rate of used household appliances is about 30%, and a large number of used household appliances are still recycled and dismantled by irregular recycling stations. It requires the joint efforts of all parties concerned to speed up the pace of replacing old appliances with new ones and get through the blocking points and smooth the industrial cycle.
In May last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued the "Notice on Doing a Good Job in the Recovery Target Responsibility System for Household Appliance Manufacturers in 2022". Haier, Gree, TCL, Changhong, Midea and Hisense were identified as enterprises to carry out the recovery target responsibility system in 2022, with a total of 16.96 million sets of four types of household appliances to be recovered.
According to the latest information, the Industry Department of the National Development and Reform Commission recently sent personnel to Shanghai to investigate the progress of the recycling target responsibility system for home appliance manufacturers.
The reporter learned from Haier Zhijia that in 2022, the company actively declared the goal of recycling 6 million used household appliances to the National Development and Reform Commission. On the recycling end, Haier Zhijia has built the fifth network covering the whole country, namely the recycling network, on the basis of sales network, service network, logistics network and information network, so as to meet the needs of pure recycling and trade-in with "five networks in one" with high efficiency.
Ren Xianquan, vice president of Haier Zhijia and general manager of recycling industry, said that Haier Zhijia takes the recycling of used household appliances as the starting point to build a recycling ecosystem of "recycling-dismantling-recycling-remanufacturing". In September last year, Haier Green Recycling Interconnection Factory was officially put into production.
Changhong established Sichuan Changhong Gerun Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. as early as 2010, specializing in the recycling, dismantling, disposal and comprehensive utilization of waste household appliances.
The recycling and dismantling of used household appliances often involves a large investment. Ren Xianquan told reporters that Haier's recycling industry not only customizes the intelligent disassembly line, but also improves the disassembly efficiency by 30%. More importantly, it regenerates the disassembled materials into reusable recycling materials, realizing high-value applications in the fields of automobiles, household appliances and daily chemicals.
Chen Hui, director of Changhong Gerun Electric Waste Division, also said that the key to turning waste household appliances into treasure is to realize recycling. For example, Changhong Gerun has the deep processing capacity of 20,000 tons of plastics per year, and the disposed plastic granular products can be customized into multiple series according to demand, covering household appliances, automobiles and so on. In addition, the disposal of waste circuit boards to obtain precious metals has also formed a corresponding profit source.