The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on waste-to-energy and waste-to-material industry in China

Chuanbin Zhou ^a,b,*, Guang Yang ^a,b, Shijun Ma ^a,b, Yijie Liu ^a, Zhilan Zhao ^a

a Stake Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

b University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China

The COVID-19 pandemic created enormous uncertainty for achieving the sustainable development goals in waste management. China implemented a number of new policies recently to encourage waste-to-energy (WTE) and waste-to-material (WTM) industry, which was also impacted by the spread of COVID-19, while the impact on the solid waste industry was merely discussed. In this work, the quarter-level financial statement data of thirty listed companies in Chinese Stock Market were analyzed by applying ARIMA intervention analysis, moreover, a system dynamic model was established for examining the impacting pathway of the pandemic. Main results are: (1) the total annual turnover of total solid waste industry increased by 28.2 times in recent 14 years, however, the estimated turnover of solid waste industry in 2020 dropped around 55.8 billion CNY; (2) the WTE industry kept growing (+21%), the WTM industry dropped significantly (- 28%), while the waste disposal industry and other solid waste industry varied slightly (- 10% and +9%), comparing their turnovers in 2019 and 2020; (3) the average trade-prices of the secondary materials during the COVID-19 pandemic were only 43.4%–85.8% of the maximum price from 2017 to 2019, resulting in the decline of the WTM industry. Considering a possible sluggish growth of the solid waste industry, the waste separation and zero waste programs in China may meet non-trivial challenges in the future. Policy implications are put forward, such as quantitative simulating the long-term impact, increasing investment and incentive on waste recycling, and building an internal circulation system for waste management.

The solid waste industry in China developed rapidly in recent years owing to the new policies on promoting sustainable solid waste management. However, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the solid waste industry in China met both opportunities and challenges. ARIMA-Intervention analysis suggests that it is reasonable to expect a significant turnover reduction of the solid waste industry in China in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, four main sectors in solid waste industry showed different financial performance. The WTE industry kept growing, the WTM industry dropped significantly, while the waste disposal and other solid waste industry varied slightly, comparing their first-quarter turnovers in 2019 and 2020. The system dynamic model indicates that there were both positive and negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on WTE industry, however, the WTM industry has met great challenges such as price drop of secondary materials, inaccessibility to community for waste pickers, and increment of operating cost. Several measurements may be vital for protecting the solid waste industry in China, such as enhancing information collection and early warning, establishing mechanism for temporary storing the recyclables, and increasing the government investment and financial input.

Article source：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110693