The Impact of Introducing Recycling Taxes on China’s Environmental Policy: Case Study on E-waste Recycling

Abstract

E-waste could be an important source of valuable metals if we can design an effective recovery mechanism. This article aims to: enhance the rate of E-waste recycling, treatment and the rate of recycled metal (secondary metal); and reduce the extraction of primary metals (virgin metals) by introducing an E-waste recycling tax, by minimizing CO2 emissions as a requirement of China’s climate change policy. On this basis, we designed a dynamic environmental-social economic model for the period 2008-2020. Upon comprehensive consideration of economic benefits and environmental impacts, the results show that by imposing a 4% levy on production volume for electronics manufacturing and imposing specific taxes on consumers for recycling E-wastes, the total GDP is maximized and is higher than without introducing any tax. Among the metals, the highest substitution ratios were tin at 30.90% and copper at 29.25%.