Several Insights from Practitioners in the Solid Waste Industry on Innovative Thinking in the Solid Waste Industry

Part.1 The basic attributes of the solid waste industry

For the solid waste industry, from the perspective of industry ownership, it belongs to the branch field of the environmental protection industry, and compared with the traditional industry, it belongs to the category of emerging industries, which is the product of social development to a certain stage. In terms of discipline, it is an interdisciplinary discipline that inherits many elements and principles of basic disciplines. According to the "Report on the Development of China's Environmental Protection Industry (2021)", the number of employees in the field of solid waste reached 820,000 in 2020, and the annual operating income has exceeded 800 billion yuan. The basic attribute of the solid waste industry is that it is a cross-cutting industry, or an integrated industry, because it is in the downstream of industry development, and the concentration of employees and head enterprises is not high, which determines its difficulty in innovation, especially the difficulty of technological originality, which is high.

Part.2 The basic model of innovation

Back to innovation, the innovation model is divided into categories, which can be basically divided into technological innovation, mechanism innovation, model innovation, etc., we take an enterprise engaged in organic waste treatment and disposal as an example to illustrate the difference between several innovations. Through market competition, a company obtained the concession right of an organic waste disposal PPP project in a certain place, with an operating period of 25 years. The company completed the construction of the project through a one-year cycle, and successfully passed the acceptance and entered commercial operation. During the construction process, the company used its own new equipment to reduce the cost of organic waste disposal per ton from the original estimate of 180 yuan to 150 yuan, thereby increasing the additional profit of 30 yuan, which is technological innovation. In the process of operation, the company has streamlined the management and operation team through the management experience of similar projects of the company, through performance appraisal and digital control and other means, improved management efficiency and reduced operating costs, which is mechanism innovation. The company draws on the advanced experience of other industries and invests in other projects to obtain economic benefits after financing through the REITs model; And expand business channels, expand the production capacity of its by-products such as crude oil, improve the output and quality of oil products, and sign supply and marketing contracts with domestic and foreign crude oil enterprises to increase sales profits, which is model innovation.

Part.3 Innovative ideas in the solid waste industry

According to the research data of the Report on the Development Status of China's Environmental Protection Industry (2021), the R&D investment in the solid waste industry accounted for 2.3% of operating income in 2020. In 2020, the total number of patents authorized by the 8,004 enterprises surveyed in the entire environmental protection industry was 21,978, with an average of 2.7 patents authorized by enterprises, and nearly 70% of the surveyed enterprises had no authorized patents in 2020. From the perspective of the proportion of R&D investment and the number of enterprise patents, to a certain extent, it reflects that most enterprises in the solid waste industry at this stage have lagging independent technological innovation capabilities and weak driving force for primary technological innovation. In most cases, the so-called innovation in the solid waste industry should be more inclined to the model innovation mentioned above, because the development history of our solid waste industry is actually a history of integration, that is, a history of combination of various technologies and models. Nowadays, we still need to look at this industry with a combined perspective, learn from the mature models of other industries, and have both "hard core" and "soft power".

Part.4 Problems and challenges

In fact, the value and ideas of realizing model innovation are far more complex and diverse than the simple cases mentioned above, and as practitioners in the industry, we should first have an innovative mind in order to gradually promote and realize the value of model innovation. Similarly, in view of the development of other industries in China, the solid waste industry is still a primary school student, and the experience and understanding of many practitioners need to be improved. As a member of the industry, in addition to witnessing the development of the industry, we should go out more and learn more cross-border advanced construction experience, management experience, investment and financing experience, operation experience and even sales experience in other industries.