Countdown to the Landing of the New National Standard! Green Sorting Centres Are About to Enter A New Era!

Recently, the State Administration for Market Supervision and Administration and the State Standardization Administration issued a public announcement that seven national standards, including the Specification for the Construction and Management of Renewable Resource Sorting Centres, which were put under the purview of the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, and led by the China Renewable Resource Recycling Association and the Tianjin Institute of Renewable Resource Research, have officially landed in the country and will be fully implemented as from 1 June 2025 onwards.

The centralised introduction of the standard system marks the formal opening of a new chapter of ‘standardisation driven industrial upgrading’ in the renewable resources industry, while releasing a trillion-dollar market signal. Waste disposal enterprises, equipment manufacturers, environmental practitioners, how to seize this wave of policy dividends? This article brings you to the point!

Better categorisation and ‘smarter’ technology

Sorting Centres ‘Separated’

Specialised sorting centre: specialising in a single category (e.g. waste plastics, waste paper), the annual processing capacity needs to meet the standard, but the area is ‘adapted to local conditions’. 

Comprehensive sorting centre: dealing with multiple categories, with an area of >3,000m2, an annual sorting capacity of >30,000 tonnes, and balanced differences between north and south. 

Zero tolerance for environmental and safety violations.

Wastewater must meet discharge standards, and noise reduction, dust control, and separate hazardous waste storage have become standard requirements. Emergency response plans must be fully in place.

For the first time, performance indicators such as output per unit area and energy consumption are being quantified and traceable — pushing companies to improve efficiency under pressure.

Intelligent equipment becomes an immediate need

Intelligent sorting robots, AI recognition systems, and IoT monitoring are being promoted by name, ending the era of traditional manual sorting.

Industrial Impact: A Leap to New Qualitative Productivity

Equipment Manufacturing Enterprises: Trillion-dollar Market, Four Major Opportunities

Market Demand Spurt: Sorting centres need to be equipped with photoelectric sorting equipment as standard, and the demand for multi-functional integrated production lines is driven by comprehensive centres.

Technology upgrading competition: low energy consumption sorting equipment, water-saving cleaning equipment has become the focus of research and development, enterprises need to shift from ‘selling equipment’ to ‘selling solutions’.

Standardisation forces industry reshuffle: environmentally compliant equipment (e.g. exhaust gas treatment device) becomes the entry ticket, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may face technological elimination.

Policy dividend: the national ‘two new’ policy (equipment renewal, trade-in) to provide subsidies, leading companies to participate in the development of standards to seize the first opportunity.

How Green Sorting Centres Turn Waste into Gold

The Qinglv Enviromental Sorting Centre project in Hubei Province, for example, covers an area of 4,000 square feet and adopts a modular design to provide a total solution tailored to customer needs.

The project system is equipped with a number of intelligent equipments, such as intelligent robots, magnetic separators, eddy current machines, etc., which can efficiently screen 3D materials, such as plastic bottles and cans, as well as 2D materials, such as films and papers, and fine impurities according to the shape and specific gravity of the materials.

Intelligent robot realises automatic sorting and categorisation of plastic bottles, tetra packs, etc. The robot incorporates vision, AI algorithms and parallel high-speed motion control technology, with a sorting accuracy rate of greater than 95 per cent and a maximum sorting speed of up to 5,400 times/hour.

The magnetic separator sifts out the iron products by adsorption, and next the precious metals such as copper and aluminium are sorted by the Eddy Current Sorting Machine.

The sorted metals, foam, cardboard, plastic bottles, fabrics, etc. are compressed into blocks using special balers. The sorted materials are transported to the back-end deep processing enterprises. It is made into related items to achieve recycling.

The production line is highly intelligent and automatic, rejecting manual labor, with high sorting efficiency, stable and reliable operation, and high value-added outputs. Green Green Sorting Centre achieves intelligent and environmentally friendly dual-drive, and promotes the transformation of renewable resources from ‘low-priced raw materials’ to ‘low-carbon and high-end supply chain’, achieving 100% resource recycling. Achieve 100% resourcefulness.

The new regulation is both a challenge and an opportunity! The construction of green sorting centres has become an irreversible trend of standardisation, intelligent equipment and digital management. Whether it is a traditional sanitation enterprise or a technology-based company, the only way to be invincible in this ‘green revolution’ is to follow the policy and embrace technology.