What is the green pain in the recycled rubber industry?

In December 2010, the “Guidelines for the Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Tires” promulgated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology pointed out that with the rapid development of the national economy and the gradual improvement of people’s living standards, China has become a major consumer of rubber resources. At present, China's annual average rubber consumption accounts for 30% of the world's total rubber consumption. Every year, China's rubber industry requires more than 70% of natural rubber and more than 40% of synthetic rubber. Imports and demand are contradictory, and rubber resources are in short supply. The impact of the development of the national economy is increasingly evident.

The "opinions" also pointed out that the tire is the most important rubber product in China. In 2009, China’s production of tire-consumed rubber accounted for about 70% of the country’s total consumption of rubber resources. It produced 233 million waste tires and 8.6 million tons of weight, equivalent to about 3 million tons of rubber resources. Use, equivalent to 5 years of natural rubber production in China.

- Recycled rubber refers to the physical and chemical processes such as pulverization, heating, and mechanical treatment of used rubber, which changes its elasticity into a rubber that is plastic and viscous and can be reused. It is easy to produce "three wastes" in the production process.

At 11 o'clock on the morning of June 27th, Jiangsu Qiangwei Rubber & Plastics Technology Co., Ltd.'s test base, the conveyor belt was pouring down reclaimed rubber particles that had just been released. The company’s chairman, Wang Shi, went hand in hand and smashed it against the national industry. Huang Jianzhong, deputy inspector of the Department of Energy Conservation and Comprehensive Utilization of the Ministry of Information Technology, said: “You see, the scene in the workshop is not smoky. The smell of rubber coming out is very small.”

In May of this year, the company was selected as the list of enterprises that meet the industrial access requirements announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (the first batch); on the afternoon of June 27th, an item entitled “Energy-saving and environmental protection waste rubber series cooling dynamic off the waste The new technology" passed the scientific and technological achievements appraisal organized by China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing.

At this time, Wang Shijun was in a good mood. He told reporters: "Environmental protection is the biggest problem in our industry. It cannot solve this problem. This industry can only be dead."

Live the door to waste rubber "newborn"

Iron and steel scrap, waste plastics, waste paper, waste household appliances, scrap cars, scrap tires ...... These are known as "waste" word garbage, recycling economy with the argument, in fact, is misplaced resources, it is to be of secondary development Urban minerals.

The reporter with the Chinese Association for the renovation and recycling of tires to the research group Qiangwei Group, Zhu Jun told reporters that the use of waste tires to produce recycled rubber is China's current major methods of handling waste tires. In October 2010, the "Tire Industry Policy" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed that recycled rubber is one of the "three rubbers" (natural rubber, synthetic rubber, and recycled rubber), and for the first time, the raw materials of recycled rubber in the tire industry have been clarified. status.

According to reports, in the 1970s, due to the continuous increase in environmental requirements, the quality of recycled rubber products and production pollution were difficult to completely solve, and the production of recycled rubber in developed countries shrank. The rise of China's reclaimed rubber industry was forced by the economic and social situation. At present, China has become the world's most developed country in the recycled rubber industry in terms of production scale, product variety, production technology, product quality, and production equipment. In 2012, China's reclaimed rubber production reached 3.5 million tons, accounting for more than 80% of the world's total output, ranking first in the world for 30 consecutive years.

With the rise of China's reclaimed rubber industry, solving the waste rubber, especially the waste tire pollution, the huge economic and social benefits generated by recycling of resources, and the obvious effects of employment, etc., have made the international community reconsider recycled rubber. Some countries in the United States and Europe have also begun to Explore, trying to break through the environmental protection bottleneck of the reclaimed rubber industry.

From the start of the rubber industry, the "freshman" path of waste rubber has been going very hard. Because it can't solve the problem of environmental protection well, the recycled rubber industry is an industry that has often been written into environmental blacklists.

"You haven't seen the old remanufactured rubber production workshop. The window is black, because the rubber powder particles are flying around. The human face is also black. There are also chemical odors." Jiangsu Qiangwei Rubber & Plastic Technology Wang Zheng, general manager of the company, told reporters about the pollution of old recycled rubber production.

Last year, environmental pollution incidents in small waste workshops in Yutian County, Hebei Province, were far more alarming than those described by Wang Zheng. The media discovered that a large number of waste tire recycling workshops existed in Yutian County, Hebei Province. The air where these workshops are located is polluted and the odor of wastewater is bad, causing great health problems to the local people. In June, Yutian County urgently shut down 310 waste tire recycling companies.

The status of the waste tire processing industry can be seen

Zhu Jun pointed out that due to the low barriers to entry in the industry and the lack of timely supervision by management departments, a large number of small workshops similar to Yutian County were found. Those small reclaimed rubber companies and workshops at the expense of the environment, extensive manufacturing, low-cost competition, to a certain extent disrupt the market order.

As an enterprise party, Wang Zheng told reporters in an analogy like this: “The thermometer is useful, but the mercury column inside is poisonous. It is necessary to wrap the mercury in the glass body before it can be harmed. The Yutian incident has caused a shock in the whole industry and the new one is about to be implemented. Environmental protection law is suffering from this industry. How to achieve clean and harmless production of recycled rubber is the lifeblood of this industry!"

The environmental situation is extremely pressing. In recent years, the industry has added to the worry of overcapacity.

Li Rulin, deputy chairman of the Renovation Glue Branch of the China Tire Renovation and Recycling Association, disclosed that at present, there are more than 1,000 reclaimed rubber companies in China with a production capacity of more than 6 million tons. In 2013, the output of reclaimed rubber in China was approximately 3.8 million tons, and the utilization rate of production capacity was approximately 63%. While measuring the relatively normal market competition in the world, a more reasonable capacity utilization rate was 80%-85%.

“At present, China’s reclaimed rubber industry has experienced serious excess capacity, resulting in a large number of idle equipment, many companies only open two production shifts, and caused the 'grabbing cake' type of vicious competition. Everyone lower prices, serious external arrears, the industry profit margins The smaller," said Li Rulin.

Zhu Jun said that most of these excess production capacity are actually outdated production capacities that are obtained at the expense of the environment. In recent years, the state has issued many policies in the field of used tires disposal. For example, last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology introduced conditions for accessing the waste tire industry. If the company's annual processing capacity of waste tires does not meet the requirements of the access conditions Environmental protection cannot meet the requirements of access conditions and is bound to be eliminated.

"The industry is facing a new environmental reshuffle, eliminating small, chaotic, dirty, poor, green development, large-scale." Zhu Jun said.