Nyingchi in Tibet is tackling the challenge of low-value recyclables through a government-enterprise partnership: the government provides collection points and sorting sites, while environmental company Aobei Environmental is responsible for operations. In August 2025, "sunshine rooms" were deployed at 40 locations. Since operation began, over 565 tonnes have been collected with a 97% sorting accuracy rate, but downstream channels for low-value items such as old clothes and fruit crates are still being developed.

Key Points

  • A 2024 National Development and Reform Commission report shows that low-value recyclables such as glass bottles, old clothes, foam boards, and fruit crates account for 40% of household waste, with a recycling rate below 30%. Over 70 million tonnes are incinerated or landfilled each year.
  • The Nyingchi Urban Management Bureau signed a three-year contract with Aobei Environmental: 40 collection points were put into use in August 2025. Aobei's mini-program has nearly 7,000 registered users, nearly 58,000 drop-offs, and over 565 tonnes recycled. Mixed disposal is not accepted.
  • After the landfill reached capacity and was closed in December 2024, Nyingchi's daily non-recyclable waste must be transported 80 kilometers to Mainling City for landfilling. Locally accumulated fruit crates are still seeking a destination due to high freight costs and loading difficulties.

The Low-Value Recycling Dilemma of a Small Plateau City

Nyingchi's urban permanent population is less than 100,000, with daily waste of about 150,000 kg, rising continuously during peak tourism season. Per capita waste generation is already close to the national average. As elsewhere, recyclables with resale value—cardboard boxes, cans, beverage bottles—are quickly taken away by waste collectors. The truly difficult items are old clothes, milk cartons, and the huge quantity of plastic fruit crates. These items can sell for money per tonne, but there are no supporting processing plants locally. Transporting them inland costs two to three hundred yuan per tonne, which under the high transport costs of the Tibetan region results in a net loss. If landfilled locally, plastic degrades extremely slowly, and leachate gradually pollutes plateau groundwater sources. Previously, such low-value items often ended up with "sorted at the front end, mixed at the back end." Lhasa is not part of this material; the economic problems of recycling ultimately pile up at the landfill.

During a 2024 inspection of the landfill, Wang Biao, then head of the City Appearance and Environmental Management Section of the Municipal Urban Management Bureau, judged that at least 10-20% of the waste sent to the landfill was still recyclable. As the landfill capacity approached its limit, the local government set the goal of not increasing landfill volume and finding a local recycling model. The turning point came when he saw a report about a county in Shaanxi where a "small company took on low-value recycling." After visiting the site, he found that both sides faced similar situations and treated low-value recycling as an operational issue rather than mere equipment procurement.

A Change in Cooperation: Government Builds the Network, Enterprise Handles the Volume

Early experiences had left both sides wary. Government tenders for equipment procurement moved too quickly; companies withdrew after losses, and collection points went dark. The company had already moved its rented factory four times. When the partner leadership changed, who should pay for electricity was debated again, and residents' hard-won drop-off habits were disrupted. Thus, Aobei founder Wen Jianchao developed a new strategy: relying solely on the price difference during sorting barely makes money. The key to profitability is getting residents to sort correctly at the front end, thereby reducing manual sorting costs at the back end, while securing three stable conditions from the government: fixed collection points procured as public facilities, startup support to cover early losses, and the ability to independently hand over operations to a state-owned enterprise or sanitation system after costs are clarified and recycling results are verified.

In Nyingchi, the new contract lasts three years. The Urban Management Bureau coordinated existing public resources to designate sites and drop-off points: the government pays no disposal fee for years 1-3, and subsidy payments are made quarterly based on service quality scores. Recycling pricing must be approved. Residents earn electronic points/cashback by category. Once mixed disposal occurs, it is subject to focused complaints, registration suspension, and post-collection processing. The sorting center does not calculate labor by "headcount" but sets a minimum performance threshold of 500 kg per person. Those who meet it stay; those who do not naturally leave, thereby reducing labor costs in the operational structure. This deep structural contract, delegated during the subsidy period, avoids disruptions in livelihood supply caused by a single operation failing alone. It is also a direction many central and western regions in the mainland are trying to benchmark.

Non-Structural New Problems That Remain

After the 40 points opened, actual drop-offs exceeded that year's forecast: a total of 15,064 ten-thousand in transaction flow has accumulated, echoing each other. However, the reporter found that the main heavy users are mostly street gatekeepers and scattered collection and recycling support personnel in residential communities who learned by word of mouth and opened accounts. Stable new scenarios have received good feedback, but short-term marketing-driven deposits are quickly absorbed, and long-term retention remains uncertain.
Full data analysis shows that approximately 96% is accurate, with an accuracy rate above 97% and positive reports. There is also a correction: registered numbers ≠ traditional conversion. The task of completing sustainable processing still depends on basic mechanism transformation that can drive fragmented reception, establish rational units, and adjust flexible recycling space nodes according to efficiency. Several actual bottlenecks currently appear, especially on the high-transport side, with ordinary losses of two to three yuan. A truck now costs over 8,100 yuan if fees are high. In terms of cost, the economic benefit of direct outward transport is not very certain. Although in specific reuse links, different hard-colored PE has been pressed back into crushed material and is being received by downstream manufacturers in certain places, only a small amount of low-value fruit crates are difficult to break apart and bundle, and a solution is still pending. The government is actively exploring connections at the district/city level, such as recycling parks plus dismantling small and medium-sized factories with reserved long-term capacity.

Industry insiders suggest that further ahead there is another indicator: whether the landfill, which has actually reached full capacity and suspended operations, can complete closer sorting, temporary storage, and low-cost compliant categorized intervention under a strategy of strict back-end anti-seepage, cover membranes, or ground treatment that "does not increase pollution and properly manages it." Some views point out that this mechanism is in the drafting process and has received relevant functional replies.

This is not just a government ledger target challenge: against the backdrop of extended producer responsibility (EPR) and textile waste control chains comprehensively covering global export markets, although currently only companies in Yunnan, Beijing, and other places are advancing clothing recycling and non-woven processing reserves, within the country's only mountainous prefecture-level administrative region in mainland China, a similar closed-loop point can be provided for "transport transfer support + manual sorting" running through old clothes, with further refined classification and graded management. It can serve as an empirical model reference for diverting low-value textiles upstream in the entire industry supply chain. Its true value is expected to lie more in building a public platform in the midstream and actually establishing a low-cost, systematic long-term operating model with the government, attracting sustained attention from various forces, and finding echoes in similar practices in Sichuan Province and the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Source: Snow Mountain Small City Explores "Low-Value Recycling" · Originally published on 2026-10-07