Recently, at the 18th Extended Producer Responsibility System and Recycling Technology Conference on Electrical and Electronic Products, Gree Electric was awarded the honour of “2025 EPR Responsibility Fulfilment Innovation Pioneer Enterprise” for its innovative practice and outstanding contributions in the field of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
As the world’s leading industrial manufacturing group, Gree Electric has always adhered to a high sense of social responsibility and environmental protection awareness, actively practiced the EPR system, established a closed-loop system of “R&D-production-sales-recycling-recycling”, and formed a circular development model of “green design-green manufacturing-green recycling”.
At present, Gree Electric has built a traceable reverse logistics recycling network covering 95% of the country and actively cooperates with e-commerce platforms such as Jingdong and Tmall to carry out omni-channel recycling of waste household appliances through various modes such as trade-in recycling, “Internet + recycling” and traditional channel recycling. In the past three years, Gree’s recycling of waste household appliances has increased year by year, and the total number of recycled units in 2024 will be as high as 8,297,900 units, covering air conditioners, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, computers and other products.
After sorting, the recycled waste household appliances will be transferred to the renewable resource recycling and treatment bases built by Gree in Changsha, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, Wuhu, Tianjin, Zhuhai and other places for green dismantling, with an annual dismantling capacity of more than 10 million units. By the end of 2024, Gree has processed more than 64.77 million units (sets) of various waste electrical and electronic products and converted a total of about 876,600 tons of recycled copper, iron, aluminum, and plastics. According to the latest calculation standards for energy conservation and carbon reduction, Gree’s green dismantling has achieved energy saving of 360,100 tons of standard coal, 4,715,200 cubic meters of water saving, and 1,092,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, greatly improving resource utilization efficiency and reducing environmental pollution.
Under the current upsurge of trade-in of household appliances, Gree Electric provides consumers with the service of “integrated delivery, installation and collection” of household appliances through the self-built reverse logistics system of “sending new and collecting the old”, creating a whole industrial chain from front-end household appliance production to back-end waste household appliance recycling, and smoothing the production, circulation, consumption and recycling of household appliances.
In addition, based on digital technology, Gree Electric has also built a complete digital recycling network system, including the Pearl Green Ring information platform and the “one machine, one code” traceability system. With the help of these digital tools, the real-time update of the recycling information of the old machine, the real-time tracking of the logistics and transportation status, and the data collection of the whole process from production to recycling are realized, which greatly improves the recycling efficiency and reduces the recycling cost, and also ensures the transparency and traceability of the recycling process.
In the future, Gree Electric will rely on the “Gree model” of turning waste household appliances into treasure explored in the dismantling of waste electronic appliances, the construction of green household appliances recycling system, and the technological innovation of recycling technology, and continue to expand recycling outlets and sorting centers to cover more cities and counties, create a more sound recycling network, and lead the home appliance industry to develop in a green, recycling, and low-carbon direction.
